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Price, by Mail, prepaid, 25 cts. 



FEEOHES EOll THE TIMES 



HON. JAMES W. WALL 



OF NEW JERSEY. 



WITH 



A SKETCH OF HIS VUmM -\5D TOUTICM. HlSTOliY, 






'f fV^1»T/!^Coi#itution is tlie Union. 

:Mm^ — 



KEW YORK: 
PUBLISHKD BY J. WALTER .t CO., 

19 CITY HALL SQUARE. 

1864. 



Liberal 3)iecount to Agents and the Trade. 



« 



SPEECHES FOR THE TIMES 



BT 



HON. JAMES W. WALL, 



OF NEW JERSEY. 



A SKETCH OF HIS PERSONAL AND POLITICAL HISTORY. 



v^I^'- 



"The Constitution is the 







'' ^- * ?^ ^ 



NEW YORK: 
PUBLISHED BY J. WALTER & CO., 

19 CITY HALL SQUARE. 
1864. 



E45-8 
.3 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year ISM, 

By J. WALTER & CO., 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Co\irt of the United States for the Southern 
District of New York. 



By 






NUVV^"" l^ 



PUBLISHERS' NOTICE 



Among the works we are getting off, soon to be offered to the pub- 
lic, IS a volume of about 600 octavo pages, entitled " Speeches for 
THE Times, bv Eastern Men— Franklin Pierce, James A. Bavard 
Isaac Tousey, James W. Wall, Wm. B. Reed, Benjamin Wood, Chas' 
Ingersoll, John MoKeon, and Tnos. H. Seymour." 

These speeches have, in nearly every case, been selected and revised 
by their authors, with special reference to their appearance in the work 
referred to ; and the several sets are in most instances preceded by a 
sketch, giving some account of the personal and political history of the 
author. "^ 

The three speeches contained in this pamphlet, also the sketch that 
precedes them, will appear in that work; but we have concluded to an- 
ticipate their publication in that form, and give them an earlier and wider 
circulation in the way here presented. During the intensely excitino- 
scenes into which we are now entering, the mass of the people will be 
more disposed to buy and read small books than large ones ; and the 
works that will be most eagerly sought for, by the class of people 
for whom we are writing and publishing, will be those which give the 
matured convictions of men who, from the first and at all times, re-ard- 
less ot danger to liberty or life, have firmly denounced the unwise, 5ick- 
ea, and unconstitutional war, wliich for the last three and a half years 
has been desolating our once happy and prosperous land. 

The zeal of new converts to the doctrines of peace is needed to give 
additional force to the great movement, before which the wild tumult 
of war IS soon to be hushed. But these new converts, with hands not 
always unstained with the blood of men slain in this murderous strife, 
are not the men to whom the multitude will look as the safest and most 
reliable leaders in this hour of greatest danger and trial. The men to 
whose counsels most heed will be given, when the multitude are called 
to the work of rebuilding the temple of liberty, will be those who, at 
the outset, saw and predicted the calamities which our country has suf- 
fered and with solemn, earnest, and continued appeals, warned the peo- , 
pie of the dangers into which they were rushing. A peculiar, deep, 



4 publishers' notice. 

and penniiH.nt interest ^vill attach to tl^e counsels and warnings— the 
words of political wisdo.n and truth-which those men uttered in times 
when every truth, whether from heaven or earth, was resisted and repelled 
with the fierce malignity of devils incarnate. 

\mong the men who have thus stood unmoved from the first, and 
wliose spirit and purposes were firm and unfaltering, even when prison 
walls and bayonets were around him, is Hon. James W. Wall, ol 

New Jersey. 

The speeches here brought again to the attention of the public, are 
not new or very recent; hut old trutlis often appear like newones in 
the light of new fiacts to which those truths relate. So it will be in 

this case. 

Bv givin.^ this and similar documents a large circulation, we hope to 
be o> some" service in c<yunteracting the tendencies towards political 
insanity, so dangerously and increasingly prevalent in this country fo. 
the last thirty years, but now at last, happily, showing some signs of 

,. . . r . J. W. & CO. 

dimmishmg. 

New York, August 10, 1864. 



JAMES W. WALL. 

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 

The gentleman whose speeches are hero introduced is, and has always been, a 
bold and unwavering advocate and defender of the civil rights of the people, as 
expressed in the Constitution and the laws of the Federal and State Governments. 
His character and position being clearly defined and understood by the people, ii 
suited the policy of the Lincoln Administration to select him as one of its first ^-ic- 
tims for proscription and persecution. This fact, together with the sentiments he 
has held and advocated, has placed him on the list of those men whose names are 
known and cherished by the friends of civQ liberty and political truth. A brief 
sketch of Mr. Wall's personal and political history will be interesting. 

James W. Wall was born in Trenton, K J., on the 26th of May, 1819. His 
father. General Garret D. Wall, held a high rank at the bar of New Jersey; also 
represented his State in the United States Senate, through one Senatorial terra: 
his coUeague being the able and distinguished Samuel L. Soutliard. It is proper 
to mention, also, that Mr. W., though opposed to revolutions, unless when just 
and mevitable, is descended from Revolutioaary stock, botli his grandfathers 
having been officers in the war for independence. 

Mr. Wall graduated at Princeton College, N. J., in the year 1838: liis standing, 
as a speaker and writer, being among the first in his class. Soon after he left 
college he commenced the study of law, and was admitted to the bar as an attorney, 
in 1841, and as counsellor-at-law in lS4i. But having a strong love for Literature, 
he soon foixid the most of his time and attention occupied in that way. The his- 
tory and science of Government Were among the themes in which he took most 
interest. For several years he was a constant and regular contributor to the 
Knickerbocker, one of the oldest magazines in this country, and among the first in 
point of literary merit. Uis contributions to that journal embraced a wide range 
of topics, among which was a series of articles on the old English poets. He was 
a contributor also to Bentley's Magazine, a London journal having a large European 
circulation. An article that appeared in the Edinhurgh Renew, in the year 1855, on 
the " Curiosities of the Roman Catacombs," was from Mr. W.'s pen. But his labors 
were not limited to the liigher departments of general hterature. He took a deep 
interest ui questions relating to the general interests and wants of society. Agri- 
culture, especially, was one of his favorite themes. Several of his addresses de- 
livered before agricultural societies and at State fairs, have been published and cir- 
culated widely. An address entitled " Our Age and its Contributions to Aarirvtture " 
deUvered before the State fair of New Jersey, Sept. 16, 1859, was reprinted in one 
of the most widely circulated agricultural journals of England, and witli very com- 
plimentary notices of matter and style. 

While thus contributing to general literature, and aiding to place in the clear 
light the truth of those common matters, tlirough tlio knowlege of which the first 
and most general wants of life are supplied, Mr. W. has identified Iiimself with 



JAMES W. WALL. 

a great diversity of interests. But the deepest and most general sympathies of 
the public have been directed to what he has written and said on political 
themes. On questions of this sort, few men of his age have written or spoken 
more. From the first, and at all times, he has been a thorough and unwavering 
Democrat. His first vote was cast for Mr. Van Buren. While others have changed 
and permiltod themselves to be driven to market and sold as fat oxen wearing 
gay ribbons, Mr. "VVaU has kept out of the shambles, and has never been for sale 
at any price. 

In 1850, Mr. "W. was tendered the nomination for Congress by the Democracy of 
the counties of Burlington, Monmouth, Ocean, and Mercer ; but declined on acco\mt 
of the very feeble and precarious health of his father, which would not permit him 
to give time and attention to the campaign, lion. Chas. S. Skelton, nominated in 
his stead, was elected by a large majority. 

In 1854, Mr. W. went to Europe and spent a year visiting prominent places of 
the East, On his feturn he published a volume entitled "Foreign Etchings, "which 
was favorably noticed in the journals of the day and had a wide circulation. 

In 1 856, Mr. Wall accepted the nomination for Congress, from the second district 
of New Jersey. A few extracts from a speech delivered on that occasion, will give 
some idea of his sentiments at that time, and will also furnish an interesting speci- 
men of his style of expression. Mr. W. said : 

" I have supported the principles of the Democratic party, not from any motives 
of personal interest, or self-aggrandizement, for I liave never asked an office of 
profit at your hands: but from an honest conviction that the interests of this great 
country could ouly be advanced and its prosperity secured by a strict adherence 
to them. I have carefully studied tlie political faith that I profess, and have 
watched with admiration the constant and undeviating progress of our Republic 
under tlie stimulating influences produced by a rigid and strict adlierence to tlie 
principles of that faith. By that constant and consistent adherence, tlie Demo- 
cratic party have literally lived down and overpowered all opposition, those principles 
ceasing to be issues, and becoming part and parcel of the policy of this great coun- 
try, now extending from Maine to where the waters of the Mexican Gulf murmur on 
the sands; from the shores where the Atlantic dashes to where young Cahfornia rolls 
down her golden sands to the Pacific. In all tlie wide area embraced in such a 
magnificent territorial acquisition as this, everywhere prosperity invigorates and 
stimulates each branch of liuman industr}- and enterprise, while the coffers of tho 
national treasury are literally overflowing with their golden store. The history of 
the world may be safely challenged for a comparison. And while domestic inte- 
rests are thus characterized by a prosperity Avholly unexampled, the foreign inte- 
rests of the Government liave been so judiciously managed, its rights so firmly 
guarded that this nation stands today, in the eyes of Ciiristendom, the First Power 
of the earth. The sun, in his course, has looked down upon many a s6ene of mag- 
nificence, commercial wealth, and political power ; he has seen the Assyrian, Mace-' 
doiiian, and Roman Empiies rise and fall; he looks this day upon the pomp, 
pride, and power of the British Empire, "with her morning drum-beat circling the 
world;" but never, in all liis course, has he looked down upon such a scene of 
fomniercial wealth, politiciil power, and national glory as is here unfolded beneath 
his Ijurning gaze at this present hour. All this prosperity, both at homo and 
abroad, has been produced by the wave of the magic wand of Democratic legisla- 
tion, guided and controlled by a Democratic policy. 

" The great part}' to which we belong, citizens, was organized on the principles 
o' '98 ; and then, for the first time, called into existence on account of the aggre.s- 
sions of the General Government on the rights of the States and the people. It 
then, at an early day, threw up the onlj' harrier tliero is to i)rotcct tlio.se rights 
against encroachments by the centralizing power of the Federal Government, 
and behind which it has this day arrayed itself again, in order to guard the 
right of popular sovereignty against Congressional usurpation. That barrier then 



INTRODUCTOEY REMARKS. 7 

thrown up, and now sheltering us, is a strict construction of the Constitution under 
which we Hve. It is belund that barrier in tliis contest, wo stand, warding oft' the 
assaults made by those who still believe, as they ever have beheved, that tliere 
exists all power in the Constitution, by forced implication or otherwise, to justify 
every encroachment upon popular sovereignty and tlie rights of the States. Strict 
construction of the Constitution and no implication in the interpretation of that 
instrument, saved this country from the curse of a United States Bank, from high 
tai'iffs, and an extravagant system of internal improvements ; and it is in adhe- 
rence to this doctrine upon the vexed question of slavery, in the impending con- 
test — tlie only issue offered by this so-called Republican party — is to preserve by 
the triiimph of the Democracy, this great and glorious Union undivided and unim- 
paired. 

In the same address, Mr. W. thus depicted the sad consequences of permitting 
a gradual encroachment upon the rights of the States : 

"The Democracy, then, consider this equality of rights in every section, as the 
only palladium of our liberties. Grant this m'onstrous power contended for hj 
the opposition — that Congress have a right to impose this slavery restriction on 
all the territories, or to run geographical lines when and where it pleases, and you 
strike a deadly blow at tliis equality at once ; and the end will be, disunion, civil 
war, and, eventually, hopeless anarchy, or a militarj- despotism. Every interest 
in the nation, as it becomes strong enough to pursue its favorite object, will refer 
to these things as precedents, and will not hesitate to impose such further restric- 
tions upon the admission of other territories and States as shall best suit the pur- 
pose of the hour : until the States to be admitted will not be so much distin- 
guished by the dates of their admission, as by the inequality of rights they may 
be permitted to enjoy under the Confederacy. Beneath the influence of such a 
policy as this, the Union must grow weaker and weaker, and the ties that once 
bound us be sundered forever." 

A vigorously-contested canvass ensued. The Know-Nothings and the Repub- 
licans united their strength against the Democracy, and the former exhibited 
intense hostihty against Mr. W., in consequence of his bold and earnest defence 
of the Constitutional rights of adopted American citizens. Mr. "W. lost the elec- 
tion by about one thousand votes — twenty-one thousand having been cast. 

In the faU of 1859, soon after the John Brown raid into Virginia, an immense 
mass-meeting was held, without distinction of party, in N^ewark, New Jersey, 
the object being to express the mdignation of the public in relation to that infa- 
mous outrage. Three speakers were selected from the Republican, Democratic, 
and American parties, respectively. Mr. W. represented the Democracy on that 
occasion, and the sentiments he expressed, reviewed now in this hour of our coun- 
try's deepest sorrow and trial, have a peculiar significance, and indicate a far-seeing 
sagacity in relation to the dangers which were at that time threatening our peace. 

Mr. W. said: 

" My friend, Mr. Frelinghuysen, in the very able and eloquent remarks to which 
you have just listened, appears to argue against the possil)ility of the dissolution 
of the Union, ' because it is a solemn compact, made not by the States, but by the 
people.' But he must remember that the Constitution, which he deems so impreg- 
nable, was adopted by the States in their sovereign capacity. They came into this 
Union as States, and they will retire in the same way. I would I could think as 
he does ; but, if fifteen States of this Confederacy should withdraw their repre- 
sentatives in both branches of Congress, where, I aslc, would you find the authority 
in the Constitution to prevent them, aud wlicre the compelling power,' the attrac- 
tive force, to bring back these political orbs that had thus dashed madly from their 
spheres? Would you coerce them bj- the military arm as rebelhous? Yon will 
tlwn inauqiirate civil luar, and r'udize the horrors Mr. Madison predicted in the Consti- 
tutional dmceniion, if the poioer to coerce disobedient States ivas con/erred upon the 



8 ja:mes w. wall. 

Federal arm. A pnlf will open between the sections wliich will never close, and 
into it will go oceans of blood and myriads of treasure. 

"I look upon the dissolution of this Union as amongst possible events; and 
when that evil hour shall come, those who counsel such a deed v^ill be in no tone 
to parlej' about Constitutional obligations or Constitutional rights." 

The speech from which the above quotations are made was closed with the fol- 
lowing impressive words: 

" It is not for me to-night, citizens of Newark, surrounded by the enterprise, 
wealth, and industry of this city — a city that feels every hour the heart-throbs of 
the great commercial emporium' of the Union — whose traffic, hke that of Tyre, is 
with 'the uatious and kings of tlie earth,' to attempt at any length to show you 
how your prosperity, and that of the whole country, rests upon that mutual inter- 
dependence, that leaning one upon the other — a relationship which, if disturbed, 
must entail untold calamities iipon all. You understand all this much better than 
I can tell it to you. 

'• Let us, then, standing, as we do to-night, upon the threshold of the great 
heart-festival of Christendom, be filled with the inspiration that comes with that 
genial season of ' Peace, good-will to men.' Let us, to-night, as in the presence 
of the justified spirits of our great ancestors, invoke heavcn-l)orn Peace, in lier 
widespread benelicence, her lofty philanthropy, her abiding faith in human nature, 
to descend into the midst of all this strife among brethren, and shed her blessed 
influences over our country, and our hearts. Let us go from this meeting with 
renewed determination to preserve intact that heritage which has descended to us 
from our fatliers — to keep unsullied and unsevered tlie links of that bright, strong 
chain wliich, forged in Revolutionary fires, and of ethereal temj)er, has thus far 
bound State to State, and man to man, in one great brotlierhood of nationality. 
Then centuries hence, some other son of New Jersey, honored, welcomed, and 
greeted, as I have been to-night, shall exclaim in heartfelt satisfaction, as I do : 

" 'A Union of Lakes, a Union of Lands, 
A Union that nothing can sever, 
A Union of Hearts, a Union of Hands, 
And the Flag of our Union for ever !' " 

"When, in consequence of the election of Mr. Lincoln, pledged to the prosecution 
of measures which the Southern Slates regarded as a direct and palpable violation 
of their Constitutional rights, a conflict of arms seemed inevitable, Mr. T\'., in con- 
nection with many others, exerted himself to secure, if possible, the adoption of 
the " Crittenden Compromise," knowing that the conflict could by that means be 
averted and the Union saved ; but those efforts, as the pen of history has already 
recorded, were unsuccessful. A relentless fanaticism had decreed that there should 
be no compromise. A few weeks later, and the purposes and proportions of the war 
were clearly indicated, and to the eye of every sagacious and unprejudiced states- 
man it was apparent, that while the Southern States had resolved to secure and 
maint-ain an independent nationality, the men whose cherislied purposes and 
designs controlled and directed the Administration, had determined to be satisfied 
with nothing less than the subjugation of those States and the destruction of their 
Constitutional rights. Mr. W, took this view of the war, and boldly declared that 
he had no sympathy with its causes or its objects, and no confidence in its manage- 
ment or its results, but looked upon it as unjust, unconstitutional, and destructive 
t.) rcpubhcan institutions. If continued in the spirit which obviously prompted 
liic Administration, he was confident it would end in giving the Southern States 
wiiat they were endeavoring to obtain, a distinct nationality, and thus lead to the 
breaking up of the Union. 

■\Vli.:n the dcfpotic purposes and measures of the Administration began to 



INTEODUCTOEY EEMAEKS. 9 

develop their character, he boldly and fearlessly denouuced them, and when the 
order came forbidding the Now York Daily News to be carried through the maUs, 
he addressed the following letter to the Postmaster-General. 

"Burlington, N. J., Aug. 2G, 18G1. 
" Hon. MoNTGOiiERT Bl.\ir, Postmaster-General : 

Dear Sir: Your recent high-handed, unconstitutional act in stopping certain 
newspapers from being circulated through the maQs, will meet, as it deserves, the 
indignant protest of every freeman. If the proscribed papers have reflected 
.severely upon the conduct of the Administration, they had a rigiit so to do in a 
Republic, where it has been our most cherished boast that the acts of otir rulers 
are open to the freest scrutiny. In fact, the right of examining the characters of 
our pubHc servants, and commenting freely upon their puljlic conduct, is the sen- 
tinel standing at tlie door and ufiectually guarding every oiher right. If the people 
relinquish that, they richly deserve to be slaves. 

"Let me commend to your serious consideration, the noble language of your late 
father-in-law, the Hon. Levi Woodbury, during the war of 1812, toward the 
influential citizens of cfertain of the Eastern States, who not only opposed the war, 
but threatened a .severance of the Union, terming it ' a rope of sand,' ' a mill-stone 
about the neclv of New England.' 

" He was indignant at their opposition, but, noble patriot that he was, he pro- 
pcsed that it should be met only in the constitutional v/ij'. 'Such opposition,' 
said he, ' will and must engender its own corrective. Let then an uncea.sing oppro- 
brium be heaped upon the measures of our Administration. It is nut punishable 
under Republicans, however severely it was under Federalists. Our sacred regard 
to independence of opinion and liberty of the press pardons tiie licentiousness. 
But the people will mark its authors and properly reward them both by the huger 
of scorn and the omnipotence of elections.' 

" Remember the above was uttered in reference to a Peace party who, during a 
foreign war with England, avowed the most supreme contempt for the llepulilic — 
who, in fact, were in direct hostility to the Constitution — engaged in intrigues for 
the overthrow of the one and for nullifying the other. In fact, a party that did 
not hesitate to avow its sympathy for the foreign foe at the very time our capital 
was in flames and in the hands of the enemy. 

" Now, sir, I defy you to lay your finger upon a line of the editorials of the Daily 
Nevjs (one of the organs under the Government ban), that by the most forced 
construction could be declared treasonable to the country. That journal has 
labored for peace, for a cessation of this unnatural war, for an appeal to the peo- 
ple from the acts of the Government, or ' an appeal from Philip drunk, to Philip 
sober.' It had a perfectly constitutional right to do this, and in that direction i 
hope it will continue to labor, undismayed by either tlio menaces of Government, 
or the threats of a mob. In fact, had the Government listened to the repeated 
warnings of the New York Dai'y Xmos instead of giving credence to tho-se 
journals, that were pretending, to sustain it, the disgrace of the defeat at Manasstis 
Plains would not now stain tlie national escutcheon. The News over and over 
again, before the advance of 'the grand army,' warned the Government of tho' 
inefficiency of its forces to cope witli the numbers, and storm the strong fortifica- 
tions of the enemy at Manassas. Its warnings were sneered at by those emi- 
nently patriotic journals, the New York Herald and Tribune, the Fhiladelphia 
Enquirer and Bulletin, as "the senseless drivellings of treason.' A common sense 
of gratitude alone might have induced the Government, for this one act, to have 
overlooked the N'ew.s; in its wholesale proscription of journals in the city of New 
York, opposed to the Administration. But it asks no favors, it is wiUing to stand 
or fall with its co-laborers in the cause of peace. 

" Our fathers were intimate friends ; and although your father to-day belongs to 
the Republican party, I cannot believe that he indorses the recent arbitrary act of 
your department, or else he must prove recreant to the doctrines lie proclaimed 
years ago in The Globe. In that able and influential journal, in speaking of the 
attempt made to pass a bill through the Senate preventing Federal officers inter- 
fering in elections, ho once said: 'Under no possible emergency, not even in 



10 JAMES W. WALL. 

insurrection or mid the throes of civil war, can this judgment justify official inter- 
ference with the freedom of speech or of the press, any more than it car. with the 
freedom of the ballot. The licentiousness of ihe tongue and of the pen is a mmor 
evil compared with the licentiousness of arbitrary power.' Little could he have 
then supposed that one of his own sons should lend himself to carry out an arbi- 
trary edict that prostrated this boasted freedom at a blow. 

"You, by such an edict, have a*<sumed to dictate to me what political papers 1 
may receive. "Where do you derive your power? You have just as nuich right to 
declare what religious works I shall receive. If I am in favor of peace I have a 
right to be, and I will work for it, write for it, pray for it, do any thing but fight 
for it, in the face of all the imperial ukases that ma\- be sent forth from Washington. 
If this war must go on, it must be waged constitutionally. Wage it against the 
enemy south of the Potomac, and not against peace-loving citizens of tiie North, 
whose ouly crime is loving the old Constitution so well that tliey cannot po.ssess 
their souls in patience when they behold the far-famed ' higher law' substituted 
in its place. Yours, respectfully, 

" James W. Wall. ' 

The above letter was not only sent as directed, but was'.ilso published in the 
papers ; soon after which, the marshal of the district, accompanied by an armed 
posse, made his appearance at Mr. Wall's residence in Burlington, arrested and 
conveyed him to Fort Lafayette. His house is only a few hundred yards'from the 
depot, and the skill and dispatch Avith which the capture was managed, gave no 
time or opportunity for his friends to rally to his rescue. Mr. Wall was confined 
two weeks in the Government depository of the civil liberties of the people ; then 
released, without trial or examination of any sort. Nor has he ever, to this day, 
received any official information as to the grounds of his arrest. The whole pra- 
ceeding, as in many other similar cases, was in direct violation of the civil rights 
guaranteed to the people by the Constitution and the laws. Nor liad it even the 
negative merit of conforming to the ceremonies usually observed in legal proceed- 
ings among civilized nations. It was simply a di.^play of arbitrary and irrespon- 
sible power. 

Oi^ being released from the Government prison and returning to his residence in 
Burlington, Mr. W. received a magnificent popular ovation, and on that oecasioQ, 
in a public address, boldly and unsparingly denounced the despotic measures of the 
Administration. So bold and fearless wore his denunciations of the men in power, 
that several of his Democratic friends thought him very imprudent, and feared his 
re-arrest in consequence of the strong terms he had used. They were forgetful of 
the fact that tyrants are cowards, and that he who fears them least and meets tliem 
most boldly is safest. Men of that sort may sometimes suffer the loss of liberty 
or life, but they leave an example and record which, to the cause of civil liberty, 
is worth the sacrifice. 

At the next session of the New Jersey Legislature, Mr. W. addressed a strong 
memorial to that body, setting forth very fully the manner and circumstances of 
his arrest and imprisonment, and showing that the whole transactiou was in direct 
and palpable violation of the civil rights guaranteed to liim as a citizen of that 
State. He then urged the Legislature to demand, through its Senators, a copy of 
tl 10 charges agahist him; and if no response was returned and uo charges fortli- 
coming, to enter its solemn protest again.st the wanton disregard of the constitu- 
tional rights of a citizen of the State. The memorial closed with the following 
earnest appeal : 

" I speak earnestly because I feci so. I liavc been made to know the insoleuoa 
of arbitrjjry power. ' The most degraded criminal in any of your prisons could not 



THE INDEMNIFICATION BILL. 11 

have been treated as I have been witliout an outcry of indignation from every 
honest citizen in the State. I have been arrested without the form of legal war- 
rant, condemned without the shadow of a trial, and puuislied by a degrading 
imprisonment of weelcs without, to this hour, knowing the nature and cause of the 
accusation against me. I know and appreciate my rights as a citizen of the United 
States, and of the State of New Jersey. I envy not the heart, for it is corrupt, nor 
the brain, for it is diseased, that can approve, or by a show of reasoning attempt to 
justify such an atrocious act of tyranny as this. If such an act can be done in a 
repubhc witliout redress, and with the approval silent or avowed of its citizens, 
pien 1 know no diflference between it, and the vilest despotism upon earth, save 
that the latter is the more honest government of the two." 

It is unpleasant to record the fact that the Legislature of New Jersey, although 
largely Democratic, was under the influence of the Federal despotism to such a 
degree, that it reported adversely to the memorial, the report taking the ground 
that " any action on thejnirt of the Legislature in conformity with the memorial might 
bring the State in conflict with the Federal Government, and referring the memorialist to 
Ms remedy at law.^' 

It is gratifying to state that the next Legislature elected Mr. Wall to the United 
States Senate to fill the unexpired term of Hon. J. R. Thompson, deceased. His 
connection with that body was for only three months, but he availed himself of 
that opportunity to record, in clear and unequivocal terms, his condemnation of the 
despotic and unconstitutional measures of the Administration. One of the speeches, 
that on the Indemnity Bill, will be found in this collection. Another of similar 
character on the " Missouri Emancipation" BiU, our hmited space compels us to omit. 

The arrest of Mr. TVaU was an unlucky stroke for the Administration. In hia 
case, as in that of many others, the tyrants attempted too much, and did serious 
injury to their cause. His influence has been much greater the last three years 
than ever before. His speeches, wherever delivered, were received witl^earnest 
attention and deep interest. Among his recently published speeches may be enu- 
merated, the address before the citizens of Burhngton, by invitation of the Common 
Council, entitled, " The Constitution Originating in Compromise — it can only be 
preserved by adhering to its spirit and observing its every obhgation." An ora- 
tion, delivered July 4th, 18C3, by invitation of the citizens of Newark, and one on 
the character and principles of Washington, delivered by invitation of the Demo- 
cratic Central Committee of the Third Congressional District of Monmouth County, 
February 2 2d, 1864. His public speeches and addresses have been heard and read 
by thousands, throughout the country, whose first interest in him and his senti- 
ments is due to the malignant efforts to destroy him, and the courage which he has 
manifested under persecution. 



THE INDEMNIFICATION BILL. 

Senate of the United States, March 2, 1863. 

TnE Senate having under consideratioTj the report of the committee of conference 
on the disagreeing votes of the two Houses on the bill to indemnify the President 
and otlicr persons for suspending the pjivilcge of the writ of habeas corpus and acts 
done in pursuance thereof— Mr. Wall said : 

Mr. President : I look upon this bill as fraught in its consequences 
with more terrible nii.schicf to the beat interests of this countiy than any 



12 JAMES W. WALL. 

of the dangerous projects tliat liavc sprung, like Minerva, but Avitliout 
her wisdom, full armed, from tlie busy brain of the Chairman of the 
Military Committee. It is more pregnant with evil for the Republic 
than was the belly of the Trojan horse to Ilium. And now is, the time, 
here the place, " where the wild fig-trees join the walls of Troy," when 
all those who would defend the palladium of Constitutional liberty must 
meet the foe and drive him back, if it i^ not already too late. Here, if 
we must perish, we should perish together. We must fight to the last, 
for if this bill once passes there is no Laliura for us to fly to. 

• This bill clothes the President of the United States, <vith the aid of 
the conscription bill passed on Sunday morning, 'with the panoply of 
the vast powers and functions of a dictator. The dictator who in the 
hour of a nation's peril came forth from the Roman senate, withabsohite 
will over the life, liberty, and property of the Roman citizen, never had 
any more power than this bill confers upon the President of the United 
States. When the decree for the appointment of a dictator went forth 
from the conscript fathers of Rome, they veiled the statues of Liberty 
that stood in every market-place, in every boarium, in every forum, and 
in every temple throughout the vast extent of the empire. The 
shrouded, silent forms of this goddess gave notice everywhere to the 
Roman citizen that his absolute rights were taken away. But under 
this bill, Mr. President, there will be no such notice to the citizen of 
this Republic. By this bill you place at the discretion of the President 
the grave power to suspend the great writ of right of the people of the 
entire country at his option. Yon actually confer upon him the 
functions of a legislator, the right by his own volition to suspend a law; 
a right which I hold under the Constitution belongs alone to Congress ; 
and which it has no more right to delegate to him than a trustee would 
have a right to delegate a trust power. This bill is only an embodi- 
ment of that pestilential polilicnl heresy with which this war com- 
menced — and to which I shall address myself presently — that the right 
to suspend the privilege of the writ of habeas corptis was an executive 
and not a legislative power — a political heresy boldly sustained in this 
Chamber by the Senator from New Jersey who preceded me, but who 
has now gone, to enjoy his reward for having unlearned the legal 
lessons that had been taught him, where, I may say, the Democracy 
cease from troubling, and the wearied politically are at rest — for it is a 
life estate. 

I shall take occasion before I conclude to allude to some of the 
points in his speech, for the purpose of refuting them, and placing 
my protest upon the record against the infamous doctrine it contains, 
and the gross insult that it offers to those great men who laid the foun- 



THE INDEMNIFICATION BILL. 13 

\ 

dations of this Repul>lic, with a view to the public happiness, by secu- 
ring to the citizen those absohite rights whicli such a doctrine as this 
overturns at a blow. 

Let this bill pass, Mr. President, and it places the liberty of every 
citizen in the loyal States at the will of the President of the United 
States, with no check, no control ; and it reopens the iron-studded 
doors of the casemates in your bastiles, to be filled, as before, by men 
against whom no accusation has been lodged, and who seek in vain to 
meet their accusers face to face before the legal tribunals of the land. 
Again will the post-offices, as they were before, become each like the 
lion's mouth of Venice, where the secret informer may lodge his lying 
accusation ; and from a tribunal as inexorable as the far-famed Council 
of Ten shall come as swift and as sure the mandate that consirrns him 
to some military dungeon of the Republic, which desecrates the names 
of those martyrs to liberty, it may be Fort Warren, it may be Fort 
Lafayette. This bill, if it passes, establishes in the Pi-esident arbitrary 
power ; and history informs us that arbitrary power is progressive, 
untiring, unresting. It never halts or looks backward. As one has 
eloquently said of it : 

"Call it by what holy name you will, saL-ctify it by what pretexts or purposes of 
patriotism you may, under any flag, in any cause, anywhere and everywhere, it is 
the foe of human rights, and by the very law of its being is incapable of good. 
There is, there can he no life for liberty but in the supreme and absolute dominion 
of law. This lesson is written in letters of blood and fire all over the history of 
nations. It is the standing moral of the annals of republics since their records began. 
It is legible upon the marbles of the elder world ; it echoes in the strife and revolu- 
tions of the new. Wherever men have thought great thoughts and died brave 
deaths for human progress, its^ everlasting truth has been proclaimed." 

An encroachment upon the Constitution, striking arbitrarily at the 
personal liberty of every citizen in the land, is but one of the paths 
leading straight towards despotism. There are numerous others, but 
they all run parallel to this. Let the nation, or the nation's represent- 
atives, submit in silence and inditFerence to such a bold usurpation of 
power as I conceive is contained in th^.s infamous bill, and from that 
moment the manly courage which is the defence, and the sleepless 
vigilance that is the price of liberty, is gone. Every one of these path- 
ways lies open, inviting the tread of usurpation. Said the aged Selden 
in reply to the ministers of Charles L : 

" The personal liberty of the subject is the life and the heart's blood of the com- 
monwealth, and if the commonwealth bleed in that master vein, all the halmof Gilead 
is hut in vain to preserve this our body politic from ruin and destruction." 

Said Algernon Sydney, England's noblest martyr : 



14 JA.MES W. WALL. 

"He who oppuj;ns the liberty of the subject under the constitution of this realm, 
and in violation of it, not only overthrows his own, but is guilty of the most brutish 
of all follies." 

These noble words -were Ikerally sprinkled, and so consecrated, 1)\" 
that noble martyr's blood. It was for their utterance lie died, the 
noblest, proudest name upon the martyr roll. He was alike inflexible 
to king and protector — the champion of liberty against despotism — in 
the study, at the bar, in the prison and upon the scatfold. To him the 
world owes those great and eloquent discourses, the lirst complete defi- 
nition and exegesis of the true nature and duties of government, full of 
brave and noble sentiments, the well-stored armory from which the 
fathers of our Republic drew the strongest and the sharpest shafts they 
shot against the breast of despotism. 

In view of the vast powers which the Congress of the United States 
propose to give to the President under the provisions of this bill, T 
would invite attention to the following sagacious words uttered by Lord 
Temple in the British Parliament at the commencement of the last 
century : 

" Rashly and wilfully to exercise a power clearly against law and the constitution 
is too great a boldness for this country at any time, and the suspending or dis- 
pensing power, that edged tool which has cut so deep, is the last that any monarch 
in his wits, in any emergency, would dare to handle in England. It is a rock that 
English history has warned against with awful beacou-lights. Its e^sercisc lost one 
prince his crown and head, and at last drove his family out of the realm. A minister 
or representative who is not afraid of the exercise of such an iniquitous power, is 
neither fit for sovereign or subject." 

Strange and startling as the truth m.ay appear, Mr. President, this 
suspending power of the absolute rights of the citizen which in peace 
or war was considered too hazardous to use, either by king, minister, 
or representative, has proved the easiest thing for republican America 
in this high noon of the nineteenth century. Nay, sir, more startling 
even than this, it has even been declared treason to question for one 
moment tlie right to its exercise. That power the use of which cost 
one prince his crown and head, and drove his family out of the realm, 
has been sported with, and is to be again, by the President of the 
United States, holding liis office u^der a limited Constitution, and 
wliere the absolute rights of the citizen were supposed to have been 
placed far beyond the reach of the tyrant grasp of arbitrary power. 
Fortunately, for the time, an indignan^peoplc rose to vindicate their 
outraged rights, and struck terror into the hearts of their rulers. Pass 
this bill, and we shall have the same abnormal acts recommenced, and 
one by one the landmarks of the Constitution will be obliterated, the 
laws suspended, the personal liberty of the subject assailed, and provost- 



THE INDEMNIFICATION BILL. 15 

inarslials and marshals like the cowled "familiars" of the Inquisition 
dogging the footsteps of the citizen and tracking him to his doom. 

The time was once, Mr. President, in this Republic, we might say 
of Americans, as was said to King John by the Archbishop — 

" Let every Briton, as ]iis mind be free, 
His person safe, his property seeure, 
His liouse as sacred as tiie fane of lieaven, ^ 

Watching unseen his ever open door, 
Watching the realm, the spirit of the laws; 
His fate determined by the rules of right, 
No hand invisible to write his doom, ^ 

No demon starting at the midnight hour 
To draw his curtain, or to drag him down 
To mausious of despair." 
* * * " Inviolable preserve 
The sacred shield that covers all the land— 
The heaven-confessed palladium of the isle — 
To Britain's sons, the judgment of their peers, 
On these great pillars ; freedom of the miud, 
Freedom of speech, and freedom of the pen, 
Forever changing, yet forever sure, 
The base of Britain rests." 

The time was, sir, when this noble eulogy, pronounced by Shakspearo 
on the British constitution, might be more aptly applied to our own. 
The great American charter of our freedom had more than conlirmcd 
to us these laws of the Confessor, and our people had given them as free, 
as full, and as sovereign a consent as was ever given by John to the 
bishops and the barons of Runnymede. The mind of the citizen was 
free, his person was safe, his property secure, his house his castle, the 
spirit of the laws his body-guard and his house-guard. Would he 
propagate truth ? Truth was free to combat error. Would he propa- 
gate error? Error itself might stalk abroad aud do her mischief, and 
make night itself grow darker, provided Truth was left free to follow, 
however slowly, with her torches to light up the wreck. 

But who is it that takQs a retrospective glance over the stirring, awful 
history of the last two years, but feels how the fine gold has grown 
dim beneath the tarnishing touch of the hand of despotic power? 
Those great, absolute rights of the citizen, which were intended to be 
beyond the reach of arbitrary influence, the right of personal liberty, 
of property, of free speech and a free press, rudely and ruthlessly vio- 
lated. Of these absolute rights, during what was not inaptly called the 
reign of terror, there Was not one that was not trampled upon by the 
Executive or his subo^-dinates ; and what was worse than all, every 
assault that was made upon them was applauded to the echo by jurists, 
lawyers, divines, and contract-hunting renegade Democrats, whose 



16 J^^IE3 W, WALL. 

cowardly hearts eitht-r ran away wilh tbcir better jtulgmcnts, or who 
really did not understand the very tirst principle of the Constitution 
under which they lived. Men were arrested and papers seized with- 
out warrant or oath of probable cause ; prisoners were held without 
presentment or indictment, denied a speedy and public trial, nay, re- 
fused a trial altogether, carried away by force from the State or district 
where their otlVnce must have been committed, and incarcerated for 
months in the bastiles of the Government, and then set free without 
being even informed of the nature and cause of the accusation against 
them. Every Constitutional outpost was driven in, and every personal 
guarantee of the citizen brushed away by the Executive as easily as 
cobwebs by the hands of a uiatit. And this by a Government profess- 
ing it was fighting for the Union, the Constitution, and the enfuiceinent 
of the laws ; for those, at the outset of this war, were the proud words 
that glittered upon your advancing standards. Doctrines were preach- 
ed in hifh places directly at war with all tiie fundamental principles of 
free government. The central power, under the bald pretence of pre- 
serving the Government, assumed a new and fearful energy, until men 
went about with " bated breath and whispering humbleness," not know- 
ino- where the next blow was to fall, or who was the next friend that 
was to be stricken down at their sides. Of, these times I may ex- 
claim, '■^quorum parsfui.''^ 

It was my lot to have felt the grasp of arbitrary power, and within 
the damp, grated casemates of one of the bastiles of the Government, 
to have learned how helpless a thing is the citizen who is deprived of 
those absolute rights, which, if they do not exist in your Constitution, 
your Constitution is a miserable delusion and a snare. Having been 
arrested without cause shown, I was libei-atcd in the same way, after 
enduring personal indignities, which, to a high-spirited man, cat like 
iron into the soul. And from the hour of my liberation up to this 
moment, when I stand upon this floor, the representative of a sovereign 
State, I have been unable to learn what those charges are. I have in 
vain demanded of the proper Department whafc were the charges against 
me, claiming the freeman's constitutional privilege " to be informed of 
the nature and cause of the accusation, and to be confronted with the 
witnesses against me." Great heavens ! Mr. Tresident, is it possible 
that such things can be, under a Constitution whose boast it has been 
that it was for the protection of the inalienable rights of men against 
oppression ? If this boast has been in vain, then, sir, that Constitution 
has but a name to live, an outer seeming to beguile and deceive, a Sodom 
apple, a hectic flush — 

" Painting the cheek upon which it preys." 



THE INDEMNIFICATION" BILL. 17 

The liberty I claim, and those who act with me, under that Constitution, 
Is not the liberty of licentiousness ; it is the liberty united with law ; 
liberty sustained by law ; and that kind of liberty we have always sup- 
posed was guaranteed to every man, rich or poor, high or low, proud or 
humble, under all exigencies, whether in peace or war, and whether 
that war is foreign, or the State is in the fearful throes of civil strife. 
This is my loyalty and that of my political friends on this floor— the 
allegiance, the devotion to organic laws. I know no other loyalty, and 
I will not bow myself at the shrine of any other. In this Republic, its 
Constitution declares : 

"No citizen shall be deprived of his life, liberty, or property, without due pro- 
cess of law." 

lie may be made to part with all three by the power of the State ; 

but that power must look well to it, sir, that in its exercise it does not 

transcend the limits in which it is appointed it to move. If it does, it 

becomes despotic ; and then, among men who know their rights, and 

knowing, dare maintain, resistance follows as naturally as light succeeds 

to darkness. If by a simple mandate, nay, by the lightning flash over 

the telegraph wire, of any Cabinet officer, in States where the people 

are loyal, and where the courts of law arq open, you or I may be torn 

from our homes and consigned for an indefinite time to the gloomy 

walls of a Government fortress, the same mandate or dispatch, only 

altered in its phraseology, may consign us immediately to the hands of 

the executioner, or deprive us of our properties, confiscating them to 

the State. If not, why not ? The right to have our lives secure against 

interference without due process of law is equally guaranteed in the same 

clause which protects our liberty and our property. These privileges 

can trace their lineage back to the grassy lawns of Runnymede, where 

they were born, more than six hundred years ago. They were extorted 

then and there by the rebellious barons, and uttered in glowing language 

that has come down to us from the ages long ago, and is still sounding 

in our ears as the sweetest note that ever came from the silver clarion 

of freedom. Listen, Senators, to the music, strong and sweet as it 

sounded in the solemn midnight centuries ago : 

"No freeman shall be seized or imprisoned, or disseized, or outlawed, or in any 
way destroyed \ nor will we go upon him or send upon him, except by the judgment 
of his peers, or the law of the laud." 

Our fathers caught the inspiring strain, and it was prolonged in that 
sonorous sentence in our own once glorious Constitution : " No person 
shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of 
law ;" " due process of law," the law which hears before it condemns, 
and punishes only after conviction. 
2 



18 JAMES W. WALL. 

Mr. President, eveiy arrest made during the reign of terror by the 
I>resident or his subordinates was in direct antagonism to this fmida 
mental principle of our Constitution, violative of its solemn sanctions, 
and, because abnormal, revolutionary ; for it encouraged, nay, sanctified 
resistance. I remember well, sir, the excitement in Europe when the 
Kino- of Naples, the infamous Bomba, seized a few young men of the 
first\milies by military force, who were engaged in plotting against 
Ills throne, and immured them in those horrid dungeons, blasted out of 
a rock, in that State fortress which, like Fort Lafayette in the bay of 
New York, is the only dark -and hateful thing upon the bright waters of 
the beautiful bay of ' Naples. The military guard, without warning, 
without accusation, just as was done with the members of the Maryland 
Leo-i:^lature and the BaUimore prisoners, surrounded their houses at the 
midnight hour, and they were torn suddenly from the luxurious com- 
forts of their splendid homes, to be immured in those awful prison- 
houses, wet with " the accursed dew of dimgeon damp," sunk far below 
the surface of the waters of the Neapolitan bay. They were suspected 
of treasonable practices. Their offence had that extent, no more. A 
cry of horror went up from almost every nation in Europe, and from 
the then imtrammelled press of the American Republic. England remon- 
strated through the manly, eloquent appeal of her indignant Gladstone. 
France raised her voice in denunciation of the outrage ; while republi- 
can America shuddered as she thanked God " that no such outrage could 
ever stain her national escutcheon." We professed to know then what 
liberty was worth ; and as we sent cheering words to those brave spirits 
engaged in the work of Italian liberation, we told those rebellious chU- 
dren^of the sun, "it is worth all your struggles, every sacrifice, and 
oceans of blood." The vengeance of an oppressed people soon rose to 
vindicate the race and punish the oppressor. In vain were her dungeons 
filled and her hearthstones desolate. The bright dream of " Itaha 
Libera" remained, the scattered manna upon which the concealed en- 
thusiasm of a whole nation fed itself, and to-day Naples is redeemed, 
disenthralled. The Bourbon family is in exile, and the people's king 
rules over the warm hearts that welcomed him to the throne. Ven- 
geance is certain, sooner or later, to overtake the oppressor ; and the 
Nemesis of retribution, with the tiaming sword, follows swiftly after the 

tyrant. 

But the objection of the danger to the public liberty and safety is not 
the only objection to this bill. It is by its own title an iivlemnity bill, 
and proposes to shelter behind the protecting regis of its strange legis- 
lation the unlawful acts of the President and his subordinates. In other 
words it proposes to Ic-alizc an illegality. It is the legislative powe' 



THE IXDEMNin CATION BILL. 19 

sheltering the executive bi-auch of the Government from the conse- 
quences of its abnormal, unconstitutional acts. You mio-ht as well 
attempt by legislation to screen the judiciary from the consequences 
of inalfeasance in office. If one department can thus protect the other, 
I a.sk, what becomes of official responsibility and the oblio-ations of 
official oaths ? 

I hold, sir, that the remedy is provided by the Constitution, article 
second, section four, in case the President is guilty of any official mis- 
conduct. By that article he is made liable to impeachment for treason, 
bribery, and other high crimes and misdemeanors. The President mav 
violate his official duty in three ways: 1. By refusing to execute the 
laws and treaties of the United States. 2. By usurping a. power not 
confided to him by the Constitution, although in some cases this may 
amount to treason. 3. By an arbitrary and corrupt use of an authority 
lawful in itself, but which was intended to be exercised with a single 
view to the public good, to answer the piirposcs of a selfish intrigue. In 
England the king is not constitutionally answerable for any of his official 
conduct ; but it is presumed that he always acts by the advice of his 
ministers, and they are held personally responsibfc for all political 
measures adopted during their administration. Some of them have 
suffered capitally for such alleged misconduct. It is on this account, in 
part, that ministers send in their resignation as soon as they find that 
the majority of Parliament is against them. But hl>re it is diff"erent. 
The President is answerable for his own official conduct, and is liable to 
impeachment for any default in the discharge of his sworn duty. To 
say that any co-ordinate branch of this Government could shield him 
from the consequences of such acts would be an absurdity, and tend 
to annihilate the whole system upon which this Government was 
founded. 

Again, this bill, if I understand it, not only proposes to shelter the 
President from the consequences of illegal acts— for the provisions of 
the bill really amount to this, if fully carried out— but to protect and 
shelter those of his subordinates whom he may have commanded to 
perform unconstitutional or illegal acts. Now, Mr. President, if there 
is one fundamental principle of law better established than any other, it 
is this : that, within the limits of their respective powers, all officers, 
from the President of the United States downwards, ought to be sub- 
mitted to and obeyed ; bict if theij should overstep the limits of their 
oficiul authority/, if they should usurp powers not delegated to them by 
the Constitution, or by some law made in pursuance of it, they would 
cease to be under the protection of their offices, and would be recog- 
nized merely as private citizens for any act of injustice or oppression 



20 JASIES W. WALL. 

they miirht commit, and liable to a civil or criminal prosecution in the 
same manner as a private citizen, with tins distinction : that if the 
wrong-doer has availed himself of his official character, or of the oppor- 
tunities which liis office affords him, to commit acts of injustice or 
oppression, it will be considered as a great aggravation of Ids guilt in a 
criminal prosecution, and will be a ground for a juiy to find exemplary- 
damages in a civil action. This is the principle that runs through all 
the cases ; and all the indemnity bills that Congress might pass from 
now to the crack of doom would not disturb the force and efficacy of 
that principle, in the mind of a high-minded, intelligent jurist, who had 
a professional reputation to guard, however it might affect those imita- 
tors of the Crawleys and Vernons of the first Charles's day, who have 
crawled to judicial positions by base servility and disgusting obsequi- 
ousness, and who might be willing to exclaim, as they did in the ship- 
money case — 

" That the King, ^ro bono publico, may charge his subjects, both in their proper- 
ties and persons for the safety and defence of the kingdom, notwithstanding any 
ect of Parhament, and may even dispense with law in case of necessity." 

The attempt of the President to shelter his subordinates from respon- 
sibility upon the sic volo, sic jubeo principle, is only another ■ phase of 
the delusion under which men's minds have been laboring. He certainly 
ought to be lawyer enough to know that the Supreme Court has decided 
in 2 Cranch, 119 — 

" That if the President should mistake the construction of an act of Congress or 
of the Constitution, and, in consequence of it, should give instructions not warranbed 
by the act or the Constitution, any aggrieved party might recover damages against 
the officer acting under such instructions, xohich, though given by the President, would 
furnish no justification or excuse." 

I admit that in general, whep a particular duty devolves upon the 
President, but the means to be used in discharge of it are not pointed 
out, he may adopt those which are most proper for that purpose, pro- 
vided they are not repugnant to the Constitution or prohibited by acts 
of Congress. Thus, in time of war, lie has the right to use all the cus- 
tomary means to carry it into effect, but he cannot override the Consti- 
tution in doing it. It would not, perhaps, be a sufficient foundation for 
an impeachment if the President should make use of the discretion in- 
trusted to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States impru- 
dently and injudiciously; for, in any such case, the people must be 
content with the honest exercise of such ability as they see fit to elevate 
to this high office. But they have a right to expect, nay, demand, in- 
tegrity and fair purposes and intentions, and that the civil rights guar- 
anteed to them by their fathers shall be scrupulously preserved. Many 



THE INDEMNIFICATION BILL. 21 

very honest citizens think that in a time of war or rebellion the Presi- 
dent becomes, by some political legerdemain, invested with all the 
functions of a dictator, and holds the lives, liberties, and properties of 
the citizen in his all-powerful grasp. Within the sphere of his consti- 
tutional duties the President may justly claim the support of all good 
citizens ; but when he transcends the powers conferred on him by the 
Constitution, to strike down the liberties of the subject, he must ex- 
pect, nay, he invites opposition. Some Senators, on the other side of 
this Chamber, seem to think that the test of loyalty is to be found in a 
blind adhesion to the President and his administration ; but I would 
say to them that my loyalty is akin to that so well described in those 
lines of Cowper : 

" "We too are friends to loyalty : we love 
The king who loves the law, respects its bounds, 
And reigns content within them." 

As to the responsibility of high officials, there are very many in the 
community who labor under the erroneous idea that the office protects 
the transgressor. The legal authorities arc all the other way. Both 
the authorities in this country and England point but one way upon 
this subject. In England the responsibility of an official who usurps 
power has never been questioned, and the loftiest officials have been 
held to a just retribution for their wrongs, and governors admitted to be 
viceroys in effect have been made to answer for their assumptions of 
power, not only in their estates, but with theu- lives. What said Chief- 
Justice Pratt, afterwards Lord Camden, in overruling a motion for a new 
trial made by the defendant in an action of trespass for arresting the 
plaintiff on a warrant from Lord Halifax, the Secretary of State? 

" If the jury had been confined by their oath to consider the mere personal injury 
only, perhaps twenty pounds damages would have been sufficient ; but the small 
injury done the plaintiff and the lowness of his station did not appear to the jury 
in that striking light in which the great point of law touching the hbcrty of the 
subject appeared to them on the trial ; they saw a magistrate over all the king's 
subjects exercising arbitrary power, violating 3fagna Charta, and attempting to de- 
stroy the liberty of the kingdom by insisting upon the legality of general warrants 
in a tyrannical and severe manner. These are the ideas which struck the jury and 
induced them to give these heavy damages. I think they have done right. To 
enter a man's house and drag him from thence by means of an unconstitutional 
warrant is worse than the Spanish Inquisition— a law under which no Englishman 
would wish to live an hour. It was a most daring public attack made upon the 
liberty of the subject." 

Pass this bill, Mr. President, and you not only confer upon the Presi- 
dent an authority which I conceive you have no power to confer, but 



2,2 ja:mes w. wall. 

you also, by your legislation, give to him and his subordinates assurance 
that they may do the like again, and escape the punishment that should 
always be meted out to violations of constitntii^nal law. It does really 
seem to me, sir, when I listen to Senators on the otlicr side defendiu"- 
acts which they admit to be abnormal, and insisting that the public 
necessities demand the sacrifice, as if those gentlemen were tryino- to 
persuade us that the best way to preserve our liberties would be to give 
them up, and that the surest mode of securing a government of law 
would be to suftor arbitrary power to destroy it. " The dearest interests 
of this country," said Junius — and I adopt his nervous language — "are 
its laws and its constitution. Against every attack upon these, there 
will, I hope, be always found among us the firmest spirit of resistance, 
superior to the united efforts of faction and ambition." 

Mr. President, this bill, in leaving it discretionary with the President, 
at any time and place and at his own option, to sus}x;nd the privilege of 
this great writ, in fact gives countenance and support to that political 
heresy that the right to suspend the writ exists in the President of the 
United States, and not in Congress. This bill does not suspend the 
privilege of the writ ; it leaves it for the President to do, whenever he 
thinks the public exigency demands it. It certainly could never have 
been the intention of the framers of the Constitution to authorize the 
Executive to suspend the privileges of the writ at his option. If this 
was a novel question that had never been mooted before, one might 
well understand how there might possibly be some variance in men's 
opinions. But when it is considered that in 1807 it had a most 
thorough and exhausting discussion in Congress; that it had been 
before the judicial tribunals of the country, and frequently the subject 
of discussion by commentators upon the Constitution and by statesmen ; 
that up to the year 1861 there was an entire unanimity of opinion as to 
where the power to suspend the privileges of this writ rested, namely, in 
the legislative department of the Government, we can only be astonished 
that there should be any difference of opinion about it. But now we 
are told that the peculiar legal optics of modern statesmen and lawyers 
have been enabled to discover that which the keen, searching, patriotic 
vision of the men who framed the Constitution foiled to see. That 
which the luminous perception of Marshall, Kent, Story, and Curtis 
could not discover, has been reserved for the keener optics of Bates and 
Lincoln. 

It appears to me, Mr. President, that the true spii'it of the habeas corpus 
clause in the Constitution is as clear as sunlight to any man who will 
study the debates both at the time of the formation of the Constitution 
and when it was submitted to the States for their adoption. There 



THE I^fDEMKIFlCATIOX BILL. 23 

were members in the Convention who were in favor of uiakino- the en- 
joyment of the priviloo-e of the writ absolute at all times, in "the same 
manner that it was intended the liberty of the press, of speech, and 
of re!i^-ion should be enjoyed. There were others again who fa\-ored 
limitations of time and suspension on certain conditions. The clause 
itselt; therefore, appears to me to have been a mean between extremes 
of opinion, and was intended to reconcile conflicting view^. There is 
very little light thrown upon the subject by the discussion in the Con- 
vention j but the peculiar position occupied by the clause in the Consti- 
tution is signiiicant, and if not conclusive, is certainly suggestive of 
the partiQular department upon which it was intended to confer this 
power. But if from the proceedings of the Convention and the debates 
in tbat body nothing satisfactory can be gleaned upon the subject, much 
may be learned from the after debates in the State conventions. We 
shall give but one reference upon this subject, although we might quote 
many others. Governor Randolph, of Virginia, who bad much to do 
with the fashioning of our Constitution, in a speecb in reply to Patrick 
Henry in the Virginia Convention, who had assailed the Constitution be- 
cause it conferred the power to suspend the privilege of the writ of 
haheas corjnis upon the Legislature, said : 

"I contend, Mr. President that the habeas cwpws inthis Constitution is at least 
on as good an<l secure a footing as in England. In that country Its suspension 
depends upon the Legislature and not upon the Crown. That great writ of right 
can only be suspended here in the same way, by the Legislature in cases of ex- 
treme peril, never by the Executive." 

Our fethers very justly conceived tbat in dangerous critical times like 
the present, the people would be willing to part with a portion of their 
freedom temporarily ; but the warning voice of history had clearly indi- 
cated to them that such loss to be endurable must rest in the discretion 
ot their representatives, and not in the breast of one man. They had 
.studied the causes of revolutionary action too closely not to know that 
this one-man power could not be tolerated for a moment except by those 
who, to use the language of Thomas JetTerson, were born with saddle^ 
on flieir backs and bits in their mouths, that tyrants might ride and si^ur 
them by the grace of God. 

The men of our early day, Mr. President, had a perfect horror of con- 
ferring arbitrary power upon a single individual. For them, arbitrary 
power in whatever shape it appeared, whether under the veil of lecviti- 
inacy, skulking in the disguise of State necessity, or presenting "the 
s.iameless fro;it of usurpation, was the sure object of their destestation 
and hostility. They might give this tremendous power to suspend the 
privileges of this writ to the law-making authoritv, because the act of 



24 JAMES W. WALL. 

suspension was a legislative act, and because in this way due notice 
would be iciven to the citizen when the exigency arrived; but to leave 
it optional in the discretion of one man, however exalted or honest he 
miolit be, to strike down the liberty of the citizen without warning, as 
has been done, this these haters of tyranny would never have consented 
to. They bdievcd, in the language of Burke, in his speech on the im- 
pcachiTicnt of ILustings : 

" It is a contradiction in terms, it is blasphemy in religion, it is wickedness in 
politics to say that any one man in a free State should possess arbitrary power 
over the liberty of the citizen, either in peace or war." 

It was unquestionably the grand aim of the framcrs of the Constitu- 
tion of the United States to establish a Govornnient which would not 
only be nominally free, but substantially so. It was with this view they 
reared those barriers to political maladministration which had been un- 
folded to their observation, and were the gathered wisdom of a thousand 
years. They knew that the safety of the people was the snj)reme law, 
but they believed in the Constitution. They believed that above that 
Constitution there was no law ; outside of it there was no security. 

The Senator from New Jersey who preceded me on this floor, in an 
elaborate speech that he delivered while here, stated that the language 
of the habeas corjms clause in our Constitution was new and peculiar ; 
and that in discussing where this power of suspension resided, we must 
set aside the analogies of English history altogether. What he meant 
to convoy by this idea I am at a loss to know. He must have been 
strangely oblivious to English precedents, where the use of this clause 
may be found almost in the very words used by Mr. Pinckney himself, 
who doubtless borrowed them from thence, lie is no less unfortunate 
when he attempts to show that the analogies of English history must be 
excluded, and have no bearing upon the point in issue. Any school-boy, 
with but a smattering of English history, could have told him better. 
All his ingenuity will fail to convince the people of New Jersey that 
their fathers had no reference to and no thought of those eventful cen- 
turies of strife between the king and the people, amid whose fierce throes 
this gi-eat privilege was born. AVliy, there never was a time in English 
constitutional history when the power of suspending this writ did not 
exist somewhere. There can be no manner of doubt on that point. The 
controversy always was, where does it reside, in the Parliament or in the 
Crown? The formal contest for this discretion to imprison and detain 
without trial marked the change in the English Government from mon- 
: archy to aristocracy, and thence to democracy, a.s this power over the Icr. 
ferrce has resided in one or other of these departments of the Govern- 
ment from the Conquest to this time. The personal liberty of the sub- 



THE IKDEIINIFICATION- BILL. 25 

ject was a natural inherent right, ^vhich could not be surrendered or 
torteited utiless by the connni.siou of some great and startlin^r oHnic. 
Ihis was a doctrine coeval with the tirst rudiments of the En.-irsh con- 
stitution, tmd handed down from Anglo-Saxon ancestry, notwithstand- 
ing their Danish struggles; asserted afterwards and confirmed by the 
Conqueror himself; and though sometimes much impaired bv the 
ferocity of the times and the occasional despotism of jealous, ex^etin- 
Finces, yet established on the firmesfbasis by the propulsions of 3fap^l 
Uuirta and a long succession of statutes on through the grand stru-o-Je 
over the Petition of Right, until it culminated in the groat habeas corpus 
act of Charles 11., justly styled a second Ma^na Charta. 

It would require something more than Senator YioVV^ dictum to make 
good such a false and forced position as this. The history of Enoland 
for centuries IS against him; the sentiments of all her Idstorians are 
antagonistic to his position ; and lastly, the declarations of the men 
^^•ho assisted in framing our Constitution stand in his way. Durincr the 
struggle between the monarch and the Commons, in 1628, in reference 
to a royal grant of a declaration of rights, Charles I. took the very <.round 
sustamed by Mr. Field and the Senators on the other side of the Cham- 
ber : 

■ Jl^V^^'^ °''^^* ^^ *^"'' °^ ''^""'"°' ^'^^^ °^ 'I'-^^g^'-to the State, when the 
^11 , ^'' commonwealth and the necessities of the hour might d;mand the 
un estnc ed exercise of the royal prerogative, and, for the time being, the liberty 
of the subject must give way." ^iueny 

This, too, was the obsequious language of tlie House of Lords who 
at that time, stood by the king against the freedom-lovin^T Hou'se of 
Commons. Let us glance for a moment at the history of tliose times- 
carry our minds back to the age of those stern, unyieldino- men who, in 
spite of the terrors of the royal frown, then and there established a bar- 
rier against the encroachment of the king's prerogative. Let us listen 
to their veiy words, to learn if we cannot catch, from those who resisted 
usurpation then, some traces of that spirit which, more than a century 
after, on this side of the Atlantic, manifested itself in the bearincr and 
actions of the men of 1787. Let us see, sir, whether, as Mr. Field\iys 
the analogies of English history can be set aside in considerin<r that 
clause in our Constitution forming, if rightly respected, the great bul- 
Avark of the freedom of the citizen. Said Sergeant Ashley, in that mem- 
orable debate constituting a landmark in history : 

"Divine truth informs us that kings have their power from God and are 
representative gods; the Psalmist calhng them the children of the Most High 
Can we conceive, then that so exalted a person as the king hath so far committed 
the power of the sword to inferior magistrates, that he hath not reserved so much 



26 JAMES W. WALL. 

•supreme power as to commit an offender to prison witliout showing cause, and ^vlcL 
out warrant? I contend, therefore, that for offences against the State, in times of 
rebelhon or in critical emergencies, the king or his council hath lawful power to 
punish by imprisonment without showing cause. The martial law, though not to 
be exercised in times of peace, when recourse may be had to the kmg's courts yet 
in times of invasion or other times of hostility, when an army royal is in the field, 
and offences are committed requiring speedy resohition, and cannot expect the 
solemnities of legal trial, then such imprisonment, execution, or other justice done 
by the law-martial is warranted by thj3 king." 

The language used by Mr. Field, tlie Attorney-General of the United 
States, and others, is hut the echo of the degrading serviUty and base- 
ness of this celebrated advocate of the divine right of kings.^ We do 
not know whether a grateful master ever conferred upon him a judgesliip 
for his services ; but^we have no doubt he obtained a substantial reward. 

But even such crouching at the king's footstool by the obscqnious, 
politic Sergeant, was more" than even the Lord President of the com- 
mittee of the House of Lords could stomach, for he told the Commons : 

^' That while at this free conference liberty was givT3n by the Lords to the king's 
counsel to speak what he thought fit for his Majesty's service, yef Ih: Sergeant 
Ashley had no authority from them to speak such servUe words as he had done.' 

And how did the manly, noble spirits, who at that early day had the 
courage to resist the claim of king and counsel to arrest and imprison 
the subject without cause or accusation, answer ? 

Said Sir Edward Coke, with his usual f|uaintncss and directness : 

" \s the centre of the greatest circle is but a little speck, so the weightiest 
matter ever lies in a Uttle room. It was a wonder for him to hear that the liberty 
of the subject could be thought incompatible with the regality of the king. In 
f ne point the king's attorney had come close to him. He was glad he had awaked 
him Because a king is trusted with greater things, such as war, money, pardons, 
Ac therefore, he should at sometimes have absolute power over the liberty of the 
subject. Wo emphatically deny his conclusion ; for the liberty of the Subject is 
fir more than all these; it isi maximum omnium humanorum &onoraw— the very 
soverei-n of all human blessings. No citizen can thus hold his liberties as tenant 
at will to tlio sovereign. Mr. Speaker, there is no such tenure to be found m aQ 
Littleton." 

" What !"' said the king's counsel, " can you arrest none without pro- 
cess or original writ? The suspected fellows may run away." To 
whom Coke answered : 

''The law gives process and indictment, and therefore gives all the means that 
any emergency can demand." 

Said William Mason : 



THE INDEMNIFICATIOK BILL. 27 

" It hath been solemnly and clearly resolved by the House, that the coniDiiiiacnt 
of a freeman, without expressing the cause of commitment, is against the law. If 
you give this i^ower by reason of the necessities of the State, you will spring a 
leak which may sink all our liberties, and open a gap through which Magna 
Charf.a, and the rest of the statutes, may issue out and vanish. AYe must never 
relinquish to the Crown this right to interfere with our liberties." 

In a subsequent debate upon the same subject, Sir Edward Coke 
said : 

" I know that prerogative is part of the law, but sovereign power is no par- 
liamentary word. Take we heed what we yield unto. Maijaa Cliaria is such a 
fellow that he will have no sovereign." 

These were the sentiments of the men who wrested the Petition of 
Eight from the first Charles, and compelled him to say, let i-ight be 
done, as is desired. The object of these bold men was the preservation 
of pers-onal liberty, in conformity to the express language of Ma/jna 
Charta — 

"That no freeman shall be taken or imprisoned but by the lawful judgment of 
his equals, or the law of the land." 

. Now, sir, the pri\-i]cge of the writ of habeas corpus at that time 
existed at common law. It was the remedy for such as were unjustly 
imprisoned to obtain their liberties. Manj^ abuses, however, having 
been introduced in the mode of granting it, other statutes were passed. 
Early in the reign of the first Charles, the courts, relying on some pre- 
tended precedents, determined that they could not, upon the habeas 
corjjus, cither bail or deliver a prisoner, though committed without anv 
cause assigned, in case he Was committed by the special command of 
the king or by the lords of the privy council. This, sir, drew on the 
parliamentary inquiry, which I'esulted in the Petition of Right, to whicli 
I'cference has just been made. The statute, passed in conformity witli 
that petition, enacts " that no freeman shall hereafter be so imprisoned 
or detained." But in the following year, Selden and others were com- 
mitted by order of the lords in council, pursuant to his Majesty's com- 
mand, under a general charge of notable contempts and stirring up 
seditions against the king and the government. This gave rise to great 
excitement in the public mind, and to another statute in the sixteenth 
year of the same king. But the habeas corpus act of the next reign, 
originating in the oppression of an obscure individual, was considered 
as another Magna Charta by Englishmen. Thus, sir, you Avill note this 
significant fact, that flagrant abuse of power by the Crown, or its min- 
isters, was always productive of a popular struggle, a struggle that pro- 



28 JAMES W. WALL. 

claims eitlicr that the exercise of such power was contrary to law, or, if 
legal, restrains it for the future. In speaking of the great habeas corpus 
act passed in the reign of Charles II., Sir William Blackstoue, writing 
several years before our Constitution was formed, and whose invaluable 
work had been studied thoroughly by the men who framed that Con- 
stitution, says : 

" This writ is of great importance to the public ; for if it were once left to the 
power of any, even the highest magistrate, to imprison arbitrarily whenever he or 
his officers thought proper, then tliere would soon be an end of all other rights 
and immunities. Some have thought that unjust attacks, even upon life or prop- 
erty, at the arbitrary will of the magistrate, are less dangerous to the common- 
wealth than such as are made upon the liberty of the subject. To bereave a man 
of life by violence, to confiscate his estate without accusation or trial, would be 
so gross and notorious an act of despotism as would at once convey the alarm of 
tyranny throughout the kingdom; but confinement of the person, by secretly 
hurrying him to jail, where his suflerings are unknown and forgotten, is a less 
public, a less striking, and therefore a more dangerous engine of arbitrary power • 
and yet, when the State is in imminent danger, even this is sometimes a necessary 
measure; but the happiness of our constitution is that it is not left to the execu- 
tive power when the danger of the State is so great as to render this measure ex- 
pedient, for it is the Parhament only can authorize, ivhen it sees proper, the Crown, 
by suspending the habeas corpus for a short and limited time, to imprison suspected 
persons without giving any reasons therefor." 

And yet, with this array of historical facts staring him in the face, 
with all these English analogies encouraging them to imitate, if not im- 
prove upon, the noble lessons they should have taught them, the late Sen- 
ator from New Jersey, and other apologists for executive usurpation, 
endeavor to convince their readers and hearers that these proud incidents 
in history had nothing to do with originating this habeas corpus clause 
in our Constitution. 

No, no, Mr. President, the men of our Constitutional Convention 
were familiar with the liistory of the civil polity of the world. But 
more thoroughly had they studied the contest, that had been going on 
for centuries in the mother country, between the Crown and the people. 
Our fathers had been protestants against prerogative and its usurpations. 
They had felt the weight of its iron hand rest heavy on their loins, and 
they determined to throw it off. They knew bow the flood of usurpa- 
tion had attempted to overwhelm their fothers, and they placed this 
habeas corpus clause in the Constitution of the new government they 
were framing, that it might stand there for all time, as the great break- 
water against the efforts of arbitrary power. 

In the argument of my predecessor, Mr. President, I find he asserts 
" that when the habeas corpus clause was inserted in the Constitution 



THE INDEMNIFICATION BILL. 29 

tlie United States liad no \Yrit of habeas cor2ni.%''^ lie lays down this 
self-evident proposition as though it was some startling truth. It is 
true that at this time the United kStates had no writ of habeas corpus, 
because there was no such government as the United States. But 
if by this he meant to convey the idea that the colonial governments 
did not recognize the existence of the writ, or that the States did not, I 
take issue with him. The old Constitution of his own State, adopted 
two days before the Declaration of Independence, and a dozen years 
before the Constitution, contains this clause : 

" The common law of England, as well as so much of the statute laws as have 
been heretofore practised in tliis colony, shall remain in force until they shall be 
altered by a future law of the Legislature." 

And most of the State Constitutions adopted after the Declaration 
contain similar clauses. 

But Mr. Field caps the climax of folly and presumption, when he de- 
clares that all experience teaches that the only safe depositary of this 
power to suspend the privilege of the great writ is the Executive, which 
the Constitution has made for us, standing upon the only basis of the 
Constitution, with no other support than the integrity and patriotism of 
the man who has been elected to it by the people. Heaven preserve us 
if this be so ! We have seen judges torn from the very seat of judg- 
ment by this Executive. We have seen the absolute rights of the citi- 
zen made a delusion and a mockery of, and the whole land startled by 
usurpation after usurpation, directed, controlled, and justified by this 
very Executive. 

The late Senator from New Jersey appears, in his very elaborate 
speech, to have a very strange mode of deriving the power in the Presi- 
dent to suspend this writ, from the peculiar phraseology of the two 
sentences : 

" All executive power shall be vested in the President of the United States ; 
and all legislative power herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United 

States." 

To the first clause he gives a general construction ; to the last a spe- 
cial and limited, insisting, that while Congress is confined, by the terms 
of the grant, specially to the exercise of only such powers as arc enu- 
merated, the executive power is beyond and above the Constitution ; or, 
in other words, the President, neither in peace or war, has any limits 
set to his authority. His will must be the law, and his sworn duty is 
to define what is necessary and proper, while the duty of the people, 
over whom he sways the sceptre, is to obey. This is certainly the fair 



30 JA3IES W. WALL. 

interpretation to be given to the conclusions of Mr. Field's singular 
logic : 

" If you give tlie powers to Congress, they sliould be special]}'- named in the 
grant; but not so with the Executive, inasmvdi as the power, frora its very nature, 
w aa executive power." 

In other words, in plainer Englisli, the people's representatives, in tlio 
exercise of their powers, are conlined strictly to the words of the grant ; 
Avhei'cas the Executive takes any and all power by implication. Well, 
surely, this is a novel mode of interpretation, and an interpretation which 
I hardly think the good people of New Jersey would be willing to adopt. 
It- is in accordance, however, with the base servility of the times, and most 
certainly entitles its author to a place on the United States bench, where he 
can elaborate more fully this peculiar dogma, and, if necessary, aid the 
embodiment of tlie war power, at the other end of the avenue, in carrying 
out and consummating his peculiar edicts. We had ahvaj^s supposed 
that " the short term for wliich the President was elected, and the nar- 
row limits to which his power was confined, manifested the jealousy and 
apprehension of future danger which the framers of the Constitution 
felt in relation to that department of the Government." At least so 
©nee said Chief-Justice Marshall. But a greater than Marshall is here, 
in the person and theories of the. late Senator from New Jersey. lie 
has seen a marvellous light, which certainly was not vouchsafed to the 
eyes of the men who laid the foundations of this G-ovcrnmcnt, and who 
certainly, if we are not presuming, understood the true theory and sys- 
tem of our Government much better than Mr. Field. 

Mr. Field appears really to me, throughout the whole course of his 
speech, and his singular positions, to have presented us with a very 
good imitation of the Quack in Moliei'c's play of " The Sick Man in 
Spite of Himself." Geronte, in that play, in amazement, says to the 
Quack : 

" M\' dear doctor, yoxi reason well, but there is one thing that staggers me in 
your lucid explanations. I always thought, till now, that the heart was on the 
left side and the liver on the right. 

" Quack. Ay, sir, so they were formerly, but we have changed all that. The col- 
lege proceeds on an entirely new method. 

" Geronte. I ask pardon, sir. 

" Quack. Not at all. Oh, there is no harm done. You are not obliged to know 
as much as we do." 

It ir.ay be that this is the case with the unenlightened people of 
New Jersey. They are not, by any means, obliged to know as much as 
Mr. Field; and I fervently trust that they never may, and v.-ill never 



THE INDEMNIFICATION BILL. 31 

consent to indorse and subscribe to any of tlie teacliings of that scliool. 
If they do, tlieir liberties are gone. 

I turn from such an atrocious sentiment to the sentiments of Daniel 
Webster, who understood so fully where existed the limits within which 
executive power could move, and upon whose well-defined lines were 
written the v/arning words — thus far shalt thou go, and no further. In 
his speech on Jackson's protest, he said : 

" Who is he that belies the blood and libels the fame of his ancestry, by de- 
claring that the security for freedom rests in executive authority ; who is he that 
invokes the executive power to come to the protection of liberty ; who is he that 
charges them with the insanity and recklessness of putting the lamb beneath the 
lion's paw? No, sir; no, sir. Our security, both in war and in peace, is in our 
watchfulness of executive power. Sir, I will never trust* executive power to 
keep the vigils of liberty." 

These are right royal words, and I would have them written tipon 
the walls of all the private and public seminaries of the land, that our 
youths might be taught early to fear the advance of arbitrary power. 1 
would have them written above the altars of the churches, that the 
priests and their congregations might learn what lawful authority means, 
of which they prate so much and know so little.- I would have them 
engraved upon the door-posts of these Houses of Congress, that the rep- 
resentatives of the States and the people might be taught in what .way 
the rights and liberties of this people are to be guarded from encroach- 
ment. Mr. President, when we contrast the argus-like vigilance of such 
men as Henry, Martin, Barbour, of the Revolutionary era, and contrast 
their indignant protests against executive encroachment, and their 
jealousy of executive power, with the thoughtless inditFerence and 
Wretched subserviency of men who profess to be statesmen and 
patriots, we may well stand aghast at the fearful degeneracy of the 
times. 

Can it be possible that these disinterested patriots of that early day 
were mistaken, and the i:aen of our day, whose chief patriotism seems to 
consist in supporting themselves out of the cotfcrs of a straitened Trea- 
sury, could thus. strangely discover the true theory of this Government? 
Our inodern political philosophers would inculcate that when the Gov- 
ernment is in a hand to hand conflict with revolted States, we must put 
all confidence in the executive head of this nation ; nay, that we must 
permit him to execute power, even if it savors of despotism, on the 
Jesuitical principle that the end justifies the means. Now, on the con- 
trary, ]\Ir. President, I hold that it is at just sucti times as these when 
the mind of the true patriot should be most distrustful, when his eye 
should bo the most watchful, and when, with the armed force surroundmg 



32 JAMES W. WALL. 

the Executive, he should be the more suspicious of the authority that 
controls it. But when, instead of confining the exercise of power within 
the well-defined lines of the Constitution, he finds it breaking down all 
the guards and fences that surround him, and invading those sacred pre- 
cincts where the liberty of person, of speech, and of thought were sup- 
posed to be guarded with more than argus-like vigilance, the true patriot 
should arraign such despotic attempt, although all the terrors of impris- 
onment, nay, of death itself, should surround him. 

It is a libel upon the spirit of our forefathers, it is a libel upon the 
men who framed our Constitution, to suppose that any such authority 
can exist in the Federal head of this Government. In the midst of the 
gloom of the present, with the eye of faith methinks I can see around 
us and above us some faint harbingers of hope for the future. As Co- 
lumbus sailed toward that new world he gave to Castile and to Leon, 
while mutiny was in the vessel, and around the dreary waste of waters 
murmuring only despair, we are told that flowers and carved woods 
came floating around him, while resting on his mastheads were birds of 
the most gorgeous plumage. So to us, sir, in the midst of the gloom of 
the present, come here and there these harbingers of the firmer land to 
which we are sailing. God hasten our coming, that we may once more 
plant our feet upon its firm foundations, the land of constitutional free- 
dom, the hope of the world. 



PEACE OR SEPARATION. 
Meeting of the Democratic Club, Philadelphia, May 9</t, 1863. 32 

Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Democratic Club: 

These are no holiday times. The pursuit of politics by the great 
mass has heretofore been a sort of pastime — an amusement for a leisure 
hour — while the few followed it for mercenary ends and base purposes. 
We have been sailing on summer seas and beneath placid skies so long, 
that, lulled into inditference by the serenity of the hour, the apparent 
absence of all danger, we were content to let inferior men and minds 
control the guidance of the vessel. Now, alas ! in the wild sweep of a 
tempest, such as no ship of State ever encountered before, that strains 
cvcrv timber and bends every mast, wc feel in such a hurricane how 
mad we have been in intrusting the fate of our vessel, at any time, to 
such incompetent, reckless seamanship, and the swayings of its helm to 
the feeble, trembling grasp of such a pilot. 

It \& fearful to gravely think upon the really awful condition of our 



PEACE OE SEPAEATION. 33 

affairs. No man can tell how long it may be before the North itself 
will be drawn into the deadly whirl of the maelstrom of revolution, by 
the folly and madness of its own rulers. No man seems to have power 
to discern the hidden links that join effect with cause, and underneath 
the shifting-, motley play of events, that looks so much like a terrible 
dance of accidents, to discover wliither the awful stream is flowing to 
its destination. It seems, to our limited comprehension, a whirlpool of 
happenings, a carnival of* impulses, a dance of chances ; and yet, my 
friends, if we had only the sagacity to penetrate the end from the be- 
ginning, we might find, in what we call chances, there is a calculable 
regularity ; over, apparently, the wildest jumble of events, there presides 
the firm, majestic sway of law — the law of retribution. 

It requires now every energy of tlie mind to comprehend and ma.ster 
the simple order of events as they succeed each other with fearful dis- 
tinctness — to learn, by the faint light they shed, whither we are dritV 
ing; and it, therefore, becomes the bounden duty of every patriotic 
citizen to give every energy of his mind to the study and investigation. 
Politics, remember, has ceased to be a pastime, and is fast being re- 
stored to what it was in the early days of our Republic — a science. It 
will cease, under such impulses as are now agitating the public mind, 
to be, what it has been so long, the art of obtaining office and keeping 
it, and resolve itself back again into "the science and art of govern- 
ment" — its true definition. 

It has been, no doubt, because politics had been transformed into a 
mere trade, and wjis looked upon as the compensatory pursuit of an 
inferior body of men — of bar-room brawlers and corrupt schemers — 
that this country finally drifted into a civil war. The revolution caught 
US with this class of men in power. The fem"ully corrupt influences of 
money at elections, bribing voters, bribing legislators, bribing govern- 
ment officials, at last brought this country to the position where Juve- 
nal's sarcasm, " Omnia Roma cum pretio''' — " All things at lio)ne are 
for a price," — found the seven-hilled city. And who shall say that 
Heaven's judgment is not at this hour upon the land for our iniquities 
in this direction ? " For the sin of our covetousness is He wroth." Has 
not avarice eaten out the heart of this nation; and do we iiot see men 
all around us to-day who are heartlessly speculating upon the calamities 
of their country ? — turning the very bones and blood of their slaughtered 
countrymen into profit — human vampires, sucking blood from their coun- 
try's veins, while, with the fanning wings of honeyed words and patriotic 
professions, they are endeavoring to lull their victim into unconscious- 
ness of their designs. The cry that comes up for a further continuance, 
or, as the phrase runs, a " vigorous prosecution of this war," out of the 
3 



34 JAMES W. WALL. 

tliroats of government contractors, pensioners, pilferers, and renegade 
Democrats, will continue to wax louder and louder. They will jostle 
each otlier at this feast of death, so long a? there is any thing else to 
gorge themselves withal. Avarice is a most tbarfuHy tiendish passi<;n. 
it brooks no double reign. It must be absolute ruler; and when once 
it attains the mastery in the human heart, it will have no brother near 
tlie throne, there remains no longer room for a single virtuous spasm, 
and it occupies that withered thing alone. The idea that a single 
patriotic impulse can remain, is simply preposterous. 

I have been a close observer of the progress of this civil war, and, 
loving my coutitry and her institutions, with a devotion intensified by 
the fact that a double current of revolutionary l>lood courses throiigh 
these veins, I have felt a shudder of horror when I looked round me 
in times like these, and noticed the high officials of the Government— the 
men of trade— the plutocracy of this land— urging on a continuance of 
this strife, while they remained behind to speculate and fill their yawning 
coffer^s with ill-gotten gains. The swelling hillocks on the reninsula— 
the new-made graves at Antictam— the ensanguined soil at Fredericks- 
burg— may press upon the breasts of their slaughtered countrymen, 
and* they are not here to testify ; but when that (rreat White Throne 
shall be set in the heavens, and the dead, small and great, stand before 
the Judge of all the eai-th, where then, I ask, will be the corrupt mock- 
patriots'of to-day, the shoddy contractors, and the hired sycophants of 
this Administration, whose fervid appeals deceived, and whose bribes 
lured their victims to their untimely graves— as, sheeted spectres, eacli 
in his bloody shroud, they come to lay their complaints at the foot of 
the Throne? When I lode round me, my friends, everywhere, and 
note the men who are houffy flaunting their patriotism in everybody's 
face, making broad the phylacteries of their unselfish devotion to coun- 
try, and charging every man with disloyalty who dares to difter with 
them, I am reminded of that telling sarcasm of Douglas Jerrold's : 
" If," said that keen observer of human nature, " the devil takes a 
l)rimstone walk through our churchyards, how he nuist chuckle and 
rub his brimstone hands when he reads some of the inscriptions on the 
tombstones ; how he must hold his sides at the ' Loving husbands,' 
'Pious Christians,' 'Honest citizens,' he sees advertised there! For 
he knows better— he knows better !" And so, as he wanders through 
our churches of a Sunday, in our busy marts of trade on a week-day, 
or whisks his brimstone tail through tlie sumptuous drawing-rooms of 
some oi our Union Leagues, and scrutinizes closely the men who are 
prcjclaiming so loudly their devoted patriotism, as lie watches every 
pulsation of their narrow hearts, how he must chuckle, and grin, and 



PEACE OR SEPARATION. 35 

nib his brimstone liands, "for he knows better — he knows better!" 
Tlie fact is, my friends, this civil war has served to develop phases in 
human nature revolting to the finer sensibilities of the human heart. 
It has manifested that patriotism is oftentimes only another name for 
avarice, and made good that telling definition of Johnson, that it is 
many times " the last refuge of a scoundrel." Men are found whose 
love to their country consists in simple devotion to themselves, and 
whose malignity increases as the bold, calm, scrutinizing gaze of hon- 
esty unmasks their designs. They throng your churches, your streets, 
your places of business, and magnify themselves upon your rostrums, 
denouncing men whose honesty and sincere patriotism makes them 
ashamed of their own pinchbeck imitations. Like the Pharisees of old, 
these men are zealous in the outward form and demonstration, and neg 
lect righteousness, mercy, and truth — thinking to compensate for their 
defects in the duty of one table, by strictly observing the duties of the 
other. The tithed mint and cummin may be paid, but the nobler, 
more substantial duties, are neglected. Like their prototypes in the 
days of our Saviour, they profess a great respect for the ancient proph- 
ets, the fethers of our Republic, and yet are eager and willing to prac- 
tise the same persecutions upon us of which our fathers complained. 
They do most literally "build the tombs of the prophets, and garnish 
the sepulchres of the righteous," and yet would have been partakers 
with the persecutors of old in the blood of the saints. " These men 
borrow," as the eloquent Wallis has said, " from the vocabulary of des- 
potism, the name of disloyalty, to designate that undefined and unde- 
finable offence, not known to free institutions, which appears to consist 
in questioning the wisdom, canvassing the policy, doubting the integ- 
Jity, and, if need be, resisting the corruptions and usurpations of those 
who temporarily hold and prostitute power. With like propriety and 
consistency, they adopt the catch-word of 'loyalty' to designate the 
equally undefinable public virtues which they would force men to 
believe they and their partisans embody and mortopolize." These men 
worship and fall down before a relic, a symbol, a piece of bunting; 
while they have not hesitated most flagrantly to violate every principle 
of freedom that flag was made to protect. They remind me of the 
saying of that pious father of the Roman Catholic church, who, after 
visiting Beckct's shrine, and witnessing the outward devotioi'i and 
immoral lives of the pilgrims that thronged round it, declared, " these 
hypocrites kiss the old shoes and handkerchiefs of the saint, but neg- 
lect his pious teachings, and the valuable lessons of his most holy 
example. They venerate his shirt and clothes, but leave his writings 
to be devoured by vermin." How forciblv all this applies to the hvpo- 



36 JAMES Vr. WALL. 

critical veiu-ration wc have scon suddenly displayed by the Abolition- 
ists for the mere emblem of our nationality, while they themselves have 
been, fyom the first, the chief confederates against the very integrity of 
that nationality. They worship the relic now, while all along they 
liave despised the teachings and doctrines of the men who gave us 
that flag. 

But to pass from individuals to the consideration of the grave 
events that now surround us, and of which we form a part. 

Alas, for our country and its future ! the fanaticism of a degenerate 
age secured the control of the councils of the nation, that had been 
swayed before by far-seeing, patriotic statesmen. Dr. Johnson used to 
say, " that fanaticism was robust ignorance." We are, day by day, 
having a realizing sense of the truth of this definition. Fanaticism 
fii'st, by its robust ignorance, brought the sections face to face in deadly 
coiaflict. In its robust ignorance, it trifled with the gravity of the 
crisis, and plunged us all into the horrors of a ruptured brotherhood, 
where it might have stayed, and that forever, the progTcss of tlie evil. 
Such political fanaticism as now controls, and has, for some ,time, the 
affairs of this country, is most truly " robust ignorance." It is robust 
in its obstinacy — it is robust in its senseless passion — it is robust in its 
utter ignorance of cause and etfect — it is robust in its insane disregard 
of consequences — it is robust in the despotism it would impose. The 
fanatics who hold to the opinions of the Republican creed do not 
exactly hold opinions, but opinions hold them. As old Donne most 
quaintly saitli : " When such men are possessed of error, it is like a 
devil only to be cast out with great difiiculty and much suffering; and 
wlien it does come out of them, it teareth them, and they wallow 
foaming." 

It is to the robust ignorance of just such men this country is indebt- 
ed for its present demoralized and distracted state. It was robust igno- 
rance of the very first principles of this Government that induced these 
fanatics to assert that the existence of the question of slavery was para- 
mount to the question of national existence — better that our Constitu- 
tion should perish, and our nationality expire, than there should be the 
clank of a single fetter heard on the limbs of a slave. It was robust ig- 
norance that caused these wretched fanatics to prefer civil war, with all 
its horrors, to compromise — to assert, as Senator Chandler did, " that it 
would be better the nation should be let bleed a little, to save it from 
the plethora induced by a long peace," 

It is, I know, gravely asserted by these men, that the present condi- 
tion of the country was the result of the obstinacy and fixed determina- 
tion of the Southern Senators in Congress ; and that no effort of con- 



PEACE OR SEPARATION". 



37 



ciliatioii or compromise would liave been listened to, or heeded by those 
who had for thirty years desired the dismemberment of the Republic. 
In antagonism to their position, the damning fact is upon the record 
that the measures of compromise and conciliation, generally known as 
the Crittenden Compromise, were steadily opposed by the Republican 
members of the Senate. Their eftbrts to defeat them were in the ordi- 
nary mode of amendments and postponements. The final vote was 
taken upon the propositions on the 3d day of March, just one day be- 
fore the adjournment of Congress. On this vote, every Democrat and 
every Southern Senator voted for the propositions, and every Republi- 
can Senator against them. But even suppose that every Cotton State 
Senator, and all the rest of the Southern Senators, together with all the 
Democratic Senators of the North had voted aye — it would not have 
saved or secured the Crittenden Compromise — it would have only given 
it a majority ; it required a two-thirds vote, and ten Republican votes 
would have been necessary. It never received one. The Republican 
party was against the proposition, and in caucus agreed that no conces- 
sions were to be made, no settlement had. Whatever responsibility 
attaches for the horrid crime of this war is upon their souls, not upon 
ours. Said the young and eloquent Senator from Ohio, Pugh : ''Re- 
member the Crittenden propositions liad been indorsed by the almost 
unanimous vote of the Legislature of Kentucky. They had been in- 
dorsed by the Legislature of the noble old Commonwealth of Virginia. 
They had been petitioned for by a larger number of the electors of the 
Li^nited States than any proposition ever before Congress. I believe in 
my heart to-day, tlicy would carry an overwhelming majority of the 
people of my State, ay, sir, of almost every State in this Union. Be- 
fore the Senators from the State of Mississippi left this Chamber, I heard 
Mr. Jefferson Davis, who assumes now to be President of the Southern 
Confederacy, propose to accept it, and to maintain the Union, if those 
propositions could receive any support from the Republican side of this 
Chamber. Therefore, of all your propositions, of all your amendments, 
inM)artiaI history will write it down, that at any time before the first of 
January a two-thirds vote for the Crittenden resolutions in the Senate, 
would have saved every State in the Union but South Carolina." 

Senator Douglas at the same time said, and I invite the special atten- 
tion of his admirers to his sentiments: "I can confirm the Senator's 
declaration th'at Senator Davis himself, when on the Committee of 
Thirteen, was ready at all times to compromise on the Crittenden pro- 
positions, and I will go further and say that Toombs was also." 

But Mr. Douglas fixes the responsibility where it belongs, and the 
charge will cling to the Republican party " like the poisoned shirt oi 



3& JAMES W. WALL. 

Nessus." In tlie following passages from liis speech of January od 
1861, kept iu the background by those of the Douglas party that havt 
sold theuiselves to the Republican, the eloquent Senator bad been plead- 
ing with them not to obstinately refuse concession — he liad in his gra- 
phic manner depicted the horrors of a civil war he thought he saw ready 
to burst upon his unhappy country, if they madly refused to give .the 
people the opportunity to pass upon the conciliatory measures before 
Congress; and then as if discerning that all his pleading would be in 
vain, he says : 

"I regret the determinatioii to which I apprehend the Kepublican Senators liavo 

come, to make no adjustment, entertain no proposition, and listen to no eompro- 

mise o/the matters now in controversy. I fear, from all the indications, that they 

are disposed to treat the matter as a party question, to be determined in caucus with 

reference to its ellects upon tlie prospects of tlieir party, rather than upon the peace 

of the country aud the safety of the Union. I invoke their deliberate judijuient 

whether it is not a dangerous experiment for any political party to demonstrate to 

the American people, tliat the unity of their party is dearer to them tliun the Union 

of these States. Their argument is, tliat the Cliicago platform having been ratiOed 

by the people, in a majority of the States, must be maintained at all hazards, no 

matter what the consequences to the country. I insist they are mistaken in the fact 

that this question was decided by the people at the last election. The American 

people have not decided that they preferred the disruption of this Government, and 

civil war, with all its horrors and miseries, to surrendering one iota of the Chicago 

platform. 

****** 

"Why not give the people a chance to vote upon these propositions. If the peo- 
ple reject them, theirs will be the responsibility, and no harm will be done by the 
reference. If they accept them, the country will be safe and at peace. The political 
party which shall refuse to allow the people to determine for themselves sit the bal- 
lot-box the issue between revolution and war on the one side, and adherence to a 
party platform on the other, will assume a fearful responsibility." 

With the comprehensive glance of a statesman, combined with the 
sensitive apprehensions of a patriot, he saw that the moment was big 
with fate. The happiness of millions of his countrymen hung trembling 
in the balance, and his great mind never put forth such strength ; the 
passions of his soul never pictured themselves so strongly in his expres- 
sive face, as on that memorable day when he pleaded so earnestly with 
the Republican fanatics, in the Senate, not to give the heritage ]j|- 
queathed to us by our fathers to reproach. He saw at a glance what 
the blind obstinacy or perversion of his political opponents would not 
sec, that a great revolution was imminent, that could be prevented by 
compromise early and graciously made. Says Macaulay : " We know 
of no great revolution which ought not to have been prevented by com- 
promiee early and graciously made. Conspiracies and insurrections in 
wl<ich small minorities are engaged — the outbreak of popular violence 
unconnected with any extensive project or any durable principle, are 
best repressed by vigor and decision. But no wise ruler, no statesman, 



PEACE OK S3':PAEATI0N. 39 

will I'.onfoinid the prevailiiio- t;iitit. with the slight local irritation. They 
will not treat the deep-seated discontents of a great party as thoy would 
the wild fury of a mob, that destroys mills and power-looms. The 
neglect of this distinction has been tatal even to Govenunents strong 
in the power of the sword.'' 

Here was just the unpardonable error, the inexcusable stupidity of 
the Abolition party in Congress. With eyes blinded by the mists of 
fanaticism, and with judgments hopelessly darkened, they mistook the 
uprising of a great people, "for the wild fury of a mob that destroy? 
mills and power-looms." That error may yet prove fatal to the Govern- 
ment they attempted to guide. 

But this attempt at conciliation and compromise in the Senate \va> 
not all. Virginia, the fruitful mother of States and of statesmen, true 
as ever to the great interest of Union, attempted to roll back the tide, 
of civil war by one otlort more. Upon the basis of a settlement undm- 
the Crittenden Crompromise, she called the celebrated Peace Conven- 
tion, Every man must remember with shame and confusion of fa<^e) 
the history of that last eifort to save the country from the visitation of 
civil war. The Peace Convention originated with a Southern State. 
Its measures and its policy were beaten down and trampled underfoot 
by the robust ignorance of the fanaticism whose plottings against the 
Constitution had made such a Convention a necessity. While this 
Congress was in session and good men were exerting themselves to 
save us, the following letter was written to Governor Blair, of Michi- 
gan, by Senator Chandler, who stands high to-day in the confidence of 
the Administration : 

"My Dear Goveknou : — Governor Bindiam and myself telejrraphed you on Satur- 
day, at the request of Massachusetts and New Yorlc, to send delegatus to the Peace, 
or Compromise Congress. They admit that wc were right, and they wrong — 
tliat no Republican State should have sent delegates. Ohio, Indiana, and Rliodt- 
Island are cuviug in; there is some danger o^ Illinois; and now they beg us for 
God's sake to come to their rescue, and save the Republican jiarty from rui>ture. 
" Truly, your friend, Z. Ciiandlku. 

"P. S. Some of the manufacturing States think that a fight would 'o awful. 
Without a little blood-letting, this Uuion would not be worth a curse." 
• 

And in a back room, at Willard's Hotel, a caucus was liold, in whicli 

one of your Pennsylvania licpublicau Ptcpi'esentatives made a speech, 

and is reported to have said : " Let civil war. come ; it could not be 

lialf as destructive to the great interests of humanity as the disruption 

of the Republican party." Whenever the impartial liistory of tliat 

Convention, and the doings of the midnight conspirators who thwarted 

its holy purposes, comes to be written, posterity will stand agliast at 

.the revelations of the-obstinacv of Northern fanaticism, and the double- 



40 JAUIES W. WALL. 

(loaliiirr and bIood-thirstin(?ss it slial] lay bare. Tliost? men substituted 
their own private hate for tlie pub]ii^.*(niarri'l, and then they forced on 
liie war in the name of the American peo])U'. They tlius eno-ajrcd tli(> 
eountry in tlieir own quarrel. When An^fiistus wished to put in forc(! 
the lex hvscc majestatis, for suppressing libels and lampoons, he to(^k 
'■are, said Aurelius, not to do it in his own name, but in the name of 
the majesty of the Roman people. He contrived the cases in such a 
form, as though it was the majority of the Iloman people that was 
insulted. 

It is Viot my intention, to-night, to dwell at any great length upon 
the primary causes that provoked this deadly strife ; but I cannot refrain 
from giving the subject more than a passing allusion. 

I have lived long enougli to have seen tlie cloud of Abolitionism 
when it was no bigger than a man's hand ; and I have watched it 
spreading and deepening in its blackness, until now it darkens all ov(3r- 
head, and from its piled up masses comes the decp-voieod thunder, 
and the wild lightning that tlireatens to strike down one by one, all 
our free institutions. I am not old enough to have witnessed the first 
strife over the Missouri Compromise in 1820, and my ears, tlierefore, 
caught not the ominous sound tliat smote upon the sensitive ears of 
Jefferson — "like a fire-bell in the night." His clear unclouded vision, 
saw with prophetic distinctness in the running of that geographical 
line, "the line of separation of these States, and rendering desperate 
the hope that man can ever enjoy the two blessings of peace and self- 
government." " My confidence is, I shall not live to see it," said the 
venerable patriot; "and I envy not the present generation the glory of 
throwing away the fruits of their fathers' sacrifices of life and fortune." 

I am old enough to remember when the Abolition element, born of this 
strife over a geographical line, first took shape and permanency in 
1844, when it formed a separate ticket for the Presidency and Yice- 
Presidency, Its wild crusading forces were then for the first time 
formed into a regular organization. Fanaticism and false leligious zeal 
were the niotive powers that impelled them along, and under the ban- 
ners of sectional hate and bigotry it rallied atthe^orth a band of wild, 
unscrupulous fanatics, who elevated what they called "The Iliglicr 
Laws" above Constitutional obligations and Constitutional guarantees — 
denouncing the great charter of our liberties a.s " a league with death 
and-a covenant with hell." 

Just at this momentous period came the Oregon (piestion, and after that 
the Mexican, w^ith its acquisition of territory ; and then Free Soilism 
first raised its head, endeavoring to limit the Constitutional riglits of 
the South in all the common territories of the Union, and, in time, m 



PEACE OR SEPARATION. 41 

conjunction wltli its Abolition ally, so convulsed the peace of the coun- 
try, that its patliot statesmen had to rush from their retirements to save 
us from being precipitated into the gulf of disunion. The Compromise 
acts of 1850 for the moment saved the Union ; the snake's head was 
only wounded, however — the snake was scotched, not killed. The re- 
vival and reagitation of the Free Soil question in the Territories — the 
abnormal platform laid down by the fjinatics who were agitating the 
question — gave fresh vitality and strength, and, casting its skin, it came 
forth a huge serpent, under the name of Black Republicanism, whose 
coils are at this very hour tightening round the Constitution and the 
States with a grasp, which, unless speedily loosened, will strangle them 
both together. It has beslimed every thing with the slaver of its 
venom, and poisons all things within reach of its infectious breath. 

By the constant agitations of these corrupt foctions, here a little, and 
there a little at first; but soon, as with a flood, fraternal affection was 
weakened ; hate, jealousy, and discord nourished, and one by one the 
strong ties that bound us as a nationality were snapped asunder, and 
to-day we find ourselves standing face to face with the gravest event 
in the world's history — the separation of, and civil war between, the 
citizens of what was once supposed to be the most enlightened nation 
of Christendom. There clearly was a time in the history of the proirress 
of this event when the war might have been averted, under the guidance 
of a wise and prudent statesmanship ; but, unfortunately, as I have be- 
fore said, the revolution caught us with fools and fanatics in power. I 
believed at the outset, as I know now, that it would have been in- 
finitely better to have let the seceding States depart in peace. I so 
urged members of Congress at the time, and the members of the Peace" 
Convention. I believed then, as I believe now, that such a wise and 
generous policy would have disarmed resentments, would have softened 
and Subdued hearts then swelling with hate, but which resistance nmst 
harden, and make more bitter still. With such a wise policy as that, 
in a few revolving moons, these " wayward sisters" would have, in peni- 
tence and tears, returned to the old homestead, beneath the old roof- 
tree, and to-day liave been standing at our side, by the altar of a com- 
mon nationality, and beneath the protecting shadow of the same flag, 
whose clustering stars, as heretofore, would have again emblemized a 
united people. I know that it is customary for the men now in 
power, and J;hose who are growing rich under its patronage, to sneer 
at such sentiments as these, nay, to denounce every man who holds 
them as ^traitor. But let me call the attention of these modern loyal- 
ists to the sentiments of one they profess to honor as a patriot and 



42 ja:mes w. wall. 

statesman — Daniel Webster. Said that truly great man, when alluding 
to his efforts to arrest civil war, in 1850 : 

"In March, 1850, when I found it my duty to address Congress on these impor- 
tant topics, it was my conscieutious belief, and it still remains unshaken, that if the 
controversy with Texas eould not be amicably adjusted, there must, in all proba- 
bility, be civil war and bloodshed; and in contemplation of such a prospect, al- 
thoui^h we took it for granted that no opposition could arise to the opposition of 
the United States that would not be suppressed, it appeared of little consequence 
on which standard victory should perch. But what of that ? I was not anxious 
about military consequences ; I looked to the civil and political state of things, and 
their results, and I inquired what >vould be the condition of the country, if, in this 
state of agitation, if in this vastly extended, though not generally pervading feeling 
of the South, war should break out and bloodshed should ensue in that quarter of 
the Union? That was enough for me to inquire into and consider; and if the 
chances had been one in a thousand, that civil war would be the result, I should 
have felt that that one-thousandth chance should be guarded against by any reason- 
able sacrifice; because, gentlemen, sanguine as I am of the future prosperity of the 
country, strongly as I believe now, after what has passed, and especially after the 
enactment of those measures to which I have referred, that it is likely to hold 
together, I yet believe that this Union, once broken, is incapable, according to all 
human experience, of being reconstructed in its original character, of beiug rece- 
mented by any chemistry, or art, or eU'ort, or skill of man." 

These were the promptings of the heart of a true patriot — the honest 
convictions of the mind of a far-seeing statesman ; and as we read them 
and compare the man and his sentiments, with the men and their sen- 
timents who filled the councils of the nation in 1860-1, it makes one's 
heart sick. The reins of the chariot of the sun in Phteton's hands were 
under surer guidance than the reins of this Government in the hands of 
those who then held them. For some time previous to the election of 
Lincoln, from the signs of the times, from the sectional bitterness mani- 
fested in llepublicau platforms, and from the growing sectional hate 
fast being developed in the Northern mind, I thought I saw pre^-nant 
signs of the coming of the terrible issue that is now upon us. In 1859, 
at the great Unfon meeting held in Newark to denounce the John 
Brown raid, I said : " It may be that this Union is not in immediate 
danger ; but admit that it is reduced to a question of time — and there 
is danger in the very thought — it does, however, really appear to me 
that there never has been a time in the history of this country, that 
such a singular unanimity prevailed among con servative men of the 
South, as to the wisdom of withdrawing from a confederacy, where 
neither their rights nor their property are respected. As long as ex- 
tremists uttered these threats, I did not think them worth minding; 
but when the cool conservative men of the South begin to wei^i in the 
balances of their calm judgments, the power of the South to stand 



PEACE OR SEPAEATIOIS'. 43 

alone, without tlie North, I tell you, my countrymen, there is danger. 
It has been declared here to night, ' that there can be no dissolution of 
the Union, because it is a solemn compact maile, not between the 
States, but by the people of the Union.' It should be remembered, 
however, that the Constitution was adopted by the States. As States 
they came into this Union, and they may return in the same way. The 
theory may sound well, that this Union cannot be dissolved except by the 
act of the whole people ; but pray what will become of the theory, if 
fifteen States of this Confederacy, by solemn conventipnal act, withdraw 
their representatives from both houses of Congress ? Where, I ask, is 
the compelling power, the attractive force to bring back these orbs that 
have thus dashed madly from their spheres ? Will you compel them 
by the military power, by the coercion of your army and navy, and 
visit upon them the penalties of rebellion?^ You, then, inaugurate 
civil war, and can only realize the fearful truth of what Mr. J\Iadison 
declared in the Constitutional Convention, * That the use of force 
against a disobedient State or States wiJl look more like a declaration 
of war, and will rightfully be considered a dissolution of the previous 
contracts by which it may be bound.' I look upon a dissolution of 
this Union as amongst possible events, and when that evil hour shall 
come, the minds of those who counsel such a deed will be in no tone to 
parley about constitutional obligations or constitutional rights. They 
will fall back upon the doctrine of State Rights, as sanctified by the 
Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of '98. They will elevate the 
emblems of State sovereignty, above the emblems of the Union, and 
beneath their folds, or those of some Confederate banner, they will 
stimulate the minds of their people, until they shall mistake passion for 
principle, and sectional hate for the promptings of patriotism. With 
South thus arrayed against North, the first blood spilled upon the 
battle-field, and the separation of this Union becomes final, irrevocable. 
A great gulf will forever yawn between them." 

These were sentiments uttered nearly four years ago. They were, 
alas ! prophetic. That gulf has opened before the martial tread of a 
million of the soldiers of the North. That gulf opened at Bull Run, 
still yawns between the sections, and unlike the one in the Roman 
forum refuses to close, although into it has already gone a large part of 
the pride and the glory of the North. Alas ! there seems to be no 
Curtius now, no warlike virtue so precious, whose self-immolation will 
close the yawning chasm. I am afraid with the terrible aggravations 
of the strife, the fierce relentless hate that civil war engenders, it will 
be only for the future in the vigorous language of a Southern bard : 
13 



44 JAMES W. WALL. 

" Peace while we're peaceful : but Union, no, never, 
The hghtnings of Heaven have rifted that chain. 
Whom war puts asunder, no jujyf^le can ever 
With blasphemous vows bind together again." 

There is no man, my friends, who will not, if he is honest, confess 
that each day, nay, each hour of the continuance of this struggle brings 
us the evidence of the awful complications in which our National affairs 
aie involved. The conviction is every day and every hour strengthened, 
that we are engaged in a strife most terrible — most lamentable — and 
none the less so, because we all are, for the moment, forced to the con- 
clusion that it will go on for some time longer. Every day, however, 
demonstrates that desperate as the struggle is, the ultimate purpose 
which alone makes war respectable — viz. : peace — is not to be attained 
through the sword. Th^ sword and the bayonet, in a civil strife like 
the present, between two such peo^jles, can never help to the proper dis- 
position in the minds of either section for a wise adjustment, and can 
never take the place of civil wisdom, withoutwhich all the triumphs of 
the battle-field are useless. Soon, whatever may be the result of single 
battles, diplomacy must take the place of war, or else anarchy, or the 
resolving this government into a military despotism must be the result. 
The idea of this strife continuing for two years longer, with the pros- 
pect of increased carnage, stagnation of business, inhibited commerce, 
is too much for any man, unless it be a shoddy contractor or a specula- 
tor in gold, to contemplate with composure. Sooner or later, by that, 
rough experience, fearful suffering, that has already come, and will be 
fearfully aggravated by the continuance of the war, if not by the more 
prudent councils of a wise forbearance, the hour for compromise and 
settlement must come. In view of the immense interests at stake, both 
for ourselves and those dearer than ourselves, our children, we must 
endeavor to hasten its coming. It is only fools or knaves who still con- 
tinue to declare that we will not treat with rebels — we cannot hold 
parley with those who are striking at the nation's life. An absolute 
monarch may talk about crushing our turbulent subjects ; but a free 
Government, whose foundation stone is "the consent of the governed,"" 
can have no desire, nay, no right, to crush out its own citizens, so 
numerous and so powerful, and who have already proved so respectable, 
both in ability, prowess and endurance, as those in arms against us. 
There can be no truth more undeniable than this, that when Northern 
States fight against Soathorn, upon the pretext of saving our national 
life or nationality, they fight for a sham or a shadow, like the dog in 
the fable, Avho, on snapping aft(>r the shadow of the substantial meat 



PEACE OR SEPAEATION. 4.^ 

between his jaws, lost the meat itself by the operation. Nothins^ 
makes our Constitution a mass of glittering generalities, and ,our Union 
a rope of sand, more quickly than civil war. It is simply the dream of 
a madman to think of enforcing a Confederation, and maintaining the 
supremacy of the Constitution in a free Republic, by the sword. The 
men who gravely propound such a theory as this are cither knavish, or 
profoundly ignorant of the great lessons taught by the analogies of 
history. If history "is philosophy teaching by example," let such men 
go to her school, and quickly unlearn their folly. Civil war never yet 
made friends or strengthened the bonds of confederations and alliances. 
Mr, Seward had a glimpse of this truth; but it was with him "like a 
tale told to an idiot ;'' it made no impression ; when be said in his 
letter to Mr. Adams in 1861 — "Only an imperial eft despotic govern- 
ment could prove the right to subjugate disaffected and insurrectionary 
States. This Federal JRejaibliran si/sttm of ours is the most unfitted 
for such a labor." Why ? Because being founded on the consent of 
the governed — the free choice of a free people — you never can reduce 
any portion of that people to submission by the coercion of arms, with- 
out shattering to pieces your whole fabric, and creatinrj a despotism in 
its place. 

. Who honestly believes for a moment that a continuance of this war 
" will form Union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, promote 
the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and 
war posterity?" And yet, these are the only objects for the securing of 
■which this Government was created. Says Machiavel, in his " Prince :" 
"A commonwealth or republic must be ruined in order to keep it a con- 
quered province; the spirit of its people must be crushed out, and the 
spirit of its laws first overthrown ;" and, therefore, to coerce the South- 
ern States into subjugation, now the avowed policy of the Administra- 
tion, is tantamount to the overthrow of their republican institutions and 
t-o their ruin. That they, after being coerced, must cease to be free 
States in the Confederation, is obvious to the most careless observer. 
Having, in a moment of partisan madness and blindness, refused conces- 
sion and compromise, and accepted the feaiful alternative of war, the 
Republican party and the Administration, with the disaster at Bull Run 
startling them from the overweening confidence in which they reposed, 
fell into another delusion, when they passed in Congress their far-famed 
resolution : "That this war is not waged on our part in any spirit of 
oppression, nor for any purpose of conquest or subjugation, nor for 
overthrowing or interfering with the established institutions of the 
Southern States; but to defend and maintain the supremacy of the Con- 



46 JAMES W. WALL. 

stitiition, and to preserve tlio Union, witli all the dignity, equality, and 
rights unirapaired ; and that as soon as these objects are accomplished, 
the war ought to cease."' 

These were high sounding words, truly — but it never appeared to 
have flashed upon their minds that a war against States, that had thrown 
oft' their allegiance to the central government by its inexorable logic, 
most remorselessly trampled into the dust, such platitudes as these. 
Upon whom were the energies of the Government to be expend- 
ed to produce these results? Why upon States in revolt against 
the Constitution and the Government, not upon a few rebellious 
citizens of States, but upon States in their organic capacity, who had 
taken possession, not only of the local State governments, but had or- 
ganized a central *govornment, in direct antagonism to the Government 
with which they were at war — against a people who were a unit in the 
stand they made, and Tiad, in bloody conflicts, shown their determination 
to throvv off the Union as abated thing. As tlie keen forecasting states- 
mansliip of Mr. Douglas very early discovered — " Subjugation, exter- 
mination, or separation must be the result of a war between Northern 
and Southern States," Either one of these conditions was in direct an- 
tagonism to the idea of " maintaining the supremacy of the Constitu- 
tion," or of " a restoration of the Union." Such an idea to his cleaj*, 
logical mind was a simple absurdity. In fact, he more distinctly enun- 
ciated this idea when he said in the Senate — " But coercion must always 
be used in the mode prescribed by the Constitution and laws. But the 
proposition to subvert the de facto government of South Carolina, and to 
reduce the people of that State to subjection to our Federal authority no 
longer involves the question of enforcing the laws in a countiy within 
our possession ; but the question of subjugation, abhorrent to every 
principle of our Government and Constitution." lie never changed 
those views until hunted to death by remorseless creditors, prostrated in 
mind and body, with the death shaft in his side, Ke was retJrning home 
to die, like the wounded stag, 

"In the place where he was roused." 

I accept the views of the statesman " towering in his pride of place" 
m the United States Senate, with every physical and mental faculty in 
full fruition, and patriotic appi-ohensions and impulses stirring and throb- 
bing in his great heart — to the sickly jaundiced sentiments that were 
forced from him in his weakness by an Abolition crowd, who but a few 
years before persecuted and reviled him. 

Has not the question of the war at last reduced itself to the alterna- 



PEACE OE SEPAEATIOjS". 47 

tives predicted by Mr. Douglas ? Can there be any possible settlement 
except upon the basis of subjugatifin which will be the result of submis- 
sion, annihilation, or separation? Sooner than the first two, in God's 
name, in the name of common humanity, I say separation a thousand 
times. In looking at the consequences to spring tVom this struggle, we 
are too apt to look upon it as an ordinary conflict, a simple war ; but it 
is something more than this — it is a civil war — the most demoralizing 
and destructive of all wars that stamps the die of its date upon the 
memory so deep that centuries fail to efface the impress. The heathen 
poet, Lucan, in his Pharsalia, fully understood the character and nature 
of it. In that poem, the atrocities of the Marian civil war are brought 
most prominently forward in the narrative. The beautifully cold, classic 
heathen mythology has here no place. The supreme powers that hover 
above the fields of slaughter are the local deified men and heroes, and 
the evil spirits of the country. The ghost of Sylla rises in the field of 
Mars, and the dead Marius is seen to break open his sepulchre on the 
banks of the Arno. A corpse is taken from the field of battle, the 
spirit forced to re-enter it, and tell what it has seen on the field of death. 
The tortured ghost beholds Cincinnatus, the Decii, and the Curii, pa- 
triots of Rome weeping and wailing— while Marius and Catiline arc 
seen bursting their chains and shouting applause. This is but the 
shadowy outline of a bold, truthful picture, sketched by a heathen artist, 
whose soul was fully alive t<j all the horrors of civil war, whose wonder- 
ful genius understood so well how to mingle the gloomy repulsive shades 
of horror and guilt that pertain to the subject. There is all over the 
picture the evidence of what Kuskin calls the " imagination penetrative." 
As one dwells upon it, the eyes seem to become bloodshot, and strained 
with a fierce horror and deadly vision. We would we had a literary 
artist now, that could sketch with half the power, the more fearful pic- 
ture that is presented here to the shuddering gaze of all Christendom. 
This vivid portraiture of civil war, sketched so many centuries ago, 
makes manifest the terrible impression it made upon a mind accustomed 
to blood and carnage, and who recognized among his gods the fierce 
god of war. Yet Christian divines, professing the simple, life-giving 
doctrines of the gentle Jesus, can rejoice over the carnage of our civil 
strife, and make the strife more horrid still by maledictions upon those 
once our brethren, that seem fanned with hot blasts from hell, not airs 
from lieaven. Let us, a Chi-istian nation, take warning to our profit from 
such a revelation by a heathen. In this same poem the poet beholds a 
vision of Rome herself plunging the dagger into her sid6, and, from the 
gaping wound it makes, flows forth a mighty torrent of blood, that 
deluges whole cities and submerges entire provinces, uotil the Itoman land 



48 JAMES W. WALL. 

becomes one vast red sea of blood. Let any man close his eycj, com- 
mune with his own heart lionestly, vfnd he will see the same vision that 
so horrified the patriot Roman. 

He may toy with the delusion that it is a contest for tlui Union and 
the supremacy of the Constitution — that like the fabled Phoenix, the 
Republic shall yet spring forth with renewed energy and life from the 
ashes of this terrible strife ; but in spite of the delusion he will find that 
the dread vision will overshadow him, while the most cruel forebodings 
will fill his mind as to the future. This is not a war where the foreign 
invader is met at the nation's threshold, and the pride, prowess, and 
ancestral glories of that nation are invoked to aid and animate the 
struggle. It is a civil war, a war of men of the same race, with the same 
avowed love for liberty in their bosoms, a war where a inan's foes are 
those of his own household, invoking the most deadly passions, and 
brutalizing the most refined feelings — a war which, if pushed to its in- 
evitable consequences, the conquered must be ground down under the 
iron heel of despotism or exterminated ; and in either case, Constitu- 
tional liberty must find her grave. We read and mourn over the hor- 
rors evoked by the civil wars of Rome, "We wonder at the fierce and 
deadly struggle of the middle ages of Italy, the Guelphs and the Ghib- 
belines — but 

"Mill at o nomine de te 
Fabula narratur," 

change but the name and the story is told of ourselves. Every victory 
is a victory over ourselves, every wound inflicted penetrates our own 
vitals, Ij, is the suicide of a great nation, unless the warlike steel can 
be snatched from hands that are bent upon consummating tlie deadly 
work. 

If such a war is not to cease, if the stronger section, the North, that 
professes not to be swayed by the impulses of passion and revenge, 
refuses to make overtures of reconciliation, it becomes a war for sub- 
jugation or annihilation. I would not do despite to the memory of my 
fathers — to our Anglo-Saxon lineage, by admitting the possibility, that 
any ten million of our own race could be subjugated by any force the 
North may bring against them. You may annihilate, but subjugate never. 
Tlieir blood, like our own, " was fetched from fathers of war proof," 
and in many a gallant struggle since this war commenced, they have 
shown that it has lost none of its martial fire. Think you these men 
will consent to live for one hour beneath the military sway of the North 
as conquered provinces, even admitting you could so hold them, which 
I deny, under a Constitution framed for the purpose of " securing the 



PEACE OR SEPARATION. 49 

blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity." Remember that 
those hearts once throbbed with your own, like the hearts of twins, 
which have rested under the same maternal breasts. They throbbed in 
unison, like, to use the German phrase, "the hearts of brothers, who 
together have attained the baptism of blood and fire." Make their case 
your own, and then tell me whether the great North would ever submit 
to 'subjugation. Never, never. Annihilation is alike impossible with a 
nation that professes to wear a Christian heart in its bosom. Besides, 
all Christendom would justly cry aloud against such a damning deed a.s 
this, while the demoralizing influences and usurped powers of the North, 
that must be evoked to execute such a hellish judgment, would reduce 
the North to a despotic power worse than Ghenghis Khan or Tamerlane 
ever controlled. Such results have been accomplished, where the will 
of the despot was the supreme law, in such devastating wars as the 
Timurs and Attilas of the human race have waged — when grass never 
grew where the hoofs of their chargers pressed, and behind them " the 
smoke of the country went up as the smoke of a furnace." Never sure- 
ly by a republic whose chief corner-stone was "the consent of the 
governed," and the object of whose form of government, was to " estab- 
lish justice and insure domestic tranquillity." 

Subjugation or annihilation being alike impossible, I am in favor of 
an immediate cessation of hostilities, for an armistice — that mid the lull 
of the strife, the heat of passion shall have time to cool, and the calm, ma- 
jestic voice of reason can be heard. In the midst of such a calm, I am 
for endeavoring to learn from those in arms against us, what their 
demands may be, and inviting their co-operation in the name of a com- 
mon Christianity, in the name of a common humanity, to some plan of 
reconciliation or reconstruction by which the sections may reunite upon 
a more stable basis — a plan in which the questions upon which we have 
differed so long, may be harmoniously adjusted ; and each section, by 
virtue of the greatness developed in this war, may profit by the experi- 
ence. If it shall be found that sectional opinions and prejudices are too 
obstinate, and the exasperations of this war have burned too deep, to 
settle it upon the basis of reconciliation or reconstruction, then, I know 
that separation and recognition are inevitable. If there is to be a set- 
tlement upon the basis of reconstruction, then reconstruction can only 
accomplish its ends by introducing into our Constitutional system, a plan 
whereby for all time to come, section shall be protected against section. 
The plan suggested some years ago by Mr. Vallandighara bears the 
stamp of his clear sagacity and statesmanlike forecast — dividing the 
country into four large sections or masses, and requiring a majority of 
the representatives from each to consent to a measure before it should 
4 



50 ja:mes w. wall. 

become a law, Mr. Callioun, iiotwitlistandiiig the undeserved obloquy 
attaching now to his name, Avas, to my mind, the most honest and com- 
prehensive statesman who grappled with national problems ; and I make 
bold here to say that no wiser, purer, more patriotic statesman ever 
lived. As early as 1849 he foretold this convulsion unless his proposed 
remedy was adopted. He regarded the institution of slavery at the 
South as the pillar of their strength, security, and civilization, and its 
disturbance by foreign elements, as sure to lead to the downfall of the 
Union. Hence, his theory of reconstruction looked to the permanency 
and security of that favo.rite institution, and to removing it far from the 
reach of intermeddling. Puritanical philanthropy. lie correctly held 
that the more perfectly a government combines power and liberty of 
the dominant race, the more perfectly it fulfils the end of its creation. 
lie further held that the GJovernment of the mere numerical majority, 
did not accomplish this in any reasonable degree — hence he proposed 
what he denominated " the concurrent majority principle," as better 
suited to prevent the Government from transcending the limits in which 
it was appointed it to move, and restrict it to its primary end, the pro- 
tection of the community from elementary disturbances. This princi- 
ple was, to take the sense of the community, through a proper organism, 
which should have a care of interests as well as numbers — considering 
the community as made up of differing and conflicting interests ; and, 
as far as the action of the government is concerned, taking the sense 
of each, through its majority or appropriate organ ; and the united sense 
of all, as the sense of the entire community. * * * * 

The tendency of a government to pass beyond its proper limits, he 
argued, was what exposed liberty to hazard, and rendered it insecure, 
and that it was the strong counteraction of governments of the concur- 
rent majority to this tendency, that had always made theni so favorable 
to liberty. The tendency of such a government, he insisted, was to 
unite the community, let its interests be ever so diversified and antago- 
nistic, while that of the numerical majority was eventually to divide it 
into two warring sections. 

It may be that the South might be willing to return upon the adop- 
tion of some such system of reconstruction as this. If this plan of 
reconciliation and reconstruction fails, then a separation must be the 
finality. I shall deeply mourn over the necessity that compels to such 
a policy, but will accept it in preference to long years of cruel strife, 
hopelessly demoralizing our people, prostrating our business interests, 
and making us the scorn and pity of Christendom. Impartial history 
will fasten the responsibility where it belongs — and where Mr. Douglas, 
in his speech of 1861, placed it, upon the RcpuhUcan parUj, who, to 



PEACE OR SEPAJSATION'. 51 

tise his own forcible language, " refused to allow the people at the bal- 
lot-boxes, to determine for themselves the issue between revolution ai^d 
war on the one side and obstinate adherence to a party platform on the 
other." The only hope I see for the country, is where Demosthenes 
found it, in his address to the Athenians. " I should," said he, "deject 
and despair, I should consider your situation as desolate and irreparable, 
if I did not reflect that you have been brought to this state by Aveak 
and improvident measures, and by weak and treacherous men. If your 
affairs had been managed wisely, if your operations had been firm and 
steady, and after all you had been seduced to this situation, I should, in- 
deed, have despaired of deliverance ; but as you have been seduced by weak 
and wicked men, I trust you may be recovered by wise and upright gov- 
ernors. Change your administration, and you may yet be saved — perse- 
vere and you must be ruined." As to the manner in which this war has 
been conducted, I have but to turn to the statements of the friends of 
America in the British Parliament in 1781, and use the words applied by 
them to the con-upt, imbecile administration of Lord North. I will adopt 
the words of Powys, who described the conduct of the American war 
thus : " This whole war has been conducted in delusion, every promise 
broken, every assertion falsified, every object relinquished. It was now 
a war for the support of government, now a war of coercion — then a war 
for the Constitution. Now the rebels a»-e in a state of exhaustion from 
exposure, without suitable clothes and without food for their famishing 
bellies; and again, these half-clad, halt-fed wretches are discomfiting the 
best troops we can send against them, or outmanoeuvring the ablest of 
our generals by their strategy — and thus, the people, the house, and the 
country had been deluded, confounded, abused, and cheated. Evasion 
led to evasion, trick to trick. He compared ministers in their mad de- 
termination to continue this wretched war, to the Spartan, who, in a 
sea-fight, swam to a galley and seized it with the right hand, which was 
instantly chopped oft'. He then renewed the eft'ort with the left, and 
met a similar catastrophe. The sailors, in the galley, then asked if he 
meant to persevere. The Spartan answered, ' Not in the same way,' and 
seized the object with his teeth. The ministry, notwithstanding their 
bad luck and losses, like the Lacedemonian, were determined to proceed, 
but he warned them, when the Lacedemonian did proceed, he lost his head." 
It may be, my friends, that these sentiments of Powys will not 
meet the acquiescence of the most worshipful, right Loyal Leaguers 
throughout the country, and more especially, of the city of Philadelphia. 
I do not expect they will, and should be surprised if they did. They 
did not, in 1781, meet the approbation of their antetypes, the Loyal 
Leaguers on this side of the water, organized during the Revolution to 



52 JAMES W. "WALL. 

jhow their loyalty to King George and their hatred to rebellion. There 
is j^ striking similarity in their creeds. The loyal tory, like tlie Loyal 
Leaguer of 1863, thought that Government had a right " to erect a mul- 
titude of new offices, and send swarms of officers to cat out our sub- 
stance — to render the military independent of, and superior to the civil ^ 
power — to subject us to a jurisdiction "foreign to our Constitution, and '• 
unacknowledged by our laws" — " to quarter large bodies of troops 
amongst us ;" to " deprive us in many cases of trial by jury ;" to take 
away our charters, abolish our most valuable laws, and altering funda- 
mentally the powers of our government ;" " to impose taxes upon us 
without our consent ;" " to excite domestic insurrection amongst us." 
The Loyal Leaguer of the Revolution believed that King George IIL, 
had a right, and so asserted, to resort to such injuries and usurpations, 
for the purpose of the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these 
states. The Loyal Leaguer of 1863, believes that the right exists in 
Abraham the First, and for the same purpose. This is the only dift'er- 
ence between the tories of 1776, and the equally malignant tories of 
1863. If they are not one and the same, they are so much alike, that 
we may say of them with Ovid : 

"Non fades una 
Nee diversa tamen, qualem dccet esse sororem," 

which may be rendered : 

" They seem not one, 
And yet not two, 
But look alike. 
As sisters do." 

I do not hesitate to declare in the ears of this Administration, and of 
the Loyal Leaguers, its allied, that if their war upon the personal liberty 
of the subject, in defiance of the guarantees of the Constitution, 
goes on, the time may come when " forbearance ceases to be a virtue," and 
" resistance to tyrants becomes obedience to God." 

The recent assault upon that patriotic champion of the Constitution 
and the rights of the people, Vallandigham, subjecting him to the secret 
inquisition of a court-martial, is an infamous violation of every Consti- 
tutional provision, and utterly subversive, if submitted to, of every 
principle upon which free government rests. That all men should yield 
to the State is beautiful in theory ; but good in practice only when the 
State is the aggregate of legitimate private Constitutional interests, 
administered by honest persons. The true public interest is composed 
of the aggregate portion of such private interests — and when the State 
makes war upon these, in a free government, that assailed interest has a 
right boldly to assert itself and demand a hearing. In despotisms, pri- 



CIVIL LIBERTY OVERTHKOWN. o3 

vate interests are not openly heard. They must proceed, if at all, by 
intrigue and by conspiracy. The interest of the State then becomes, — 
as it really is fast coming here, — the interests administered by function- 
aries who advance and keep themselves at the public expense, and put 
down with the strong arm of unlicensed power those who have the 
courage to complain. We, as Democrats, nay, as American citizens, 
only ask (it is all we ever asked) that the great magna charta of our 
freedom shall be observed, and the guaranteed rights of the citizen se- 
cured. Obedience to the Constitution and the laws has ever been with 
us, and must ever be, paramount to obedience to arbitrary power. Let 
our cry be in the fearful contest that is approaching — " We will ask for 
nothing but what is right ; we will submit to nothing that is MTong" — 
and then if our cry is unheeded, let us pray that some Maccabeus shall 
arise, who will assert the honor of the ancient faith, and defend the 
temple of his forefathers with as ardent and determined a spirit as that 
which actuates these innovators to destroy the monuments of the piety, 
patriotism, and glory of our fathers. 



CIVIL LIBERTY OVERTHROWN. 

Mass Meeting^ Mount Holly, N. /., Sept. 28, 1863. 

Fellow-citizens : I am here to-day, in obedience to the invitation 
of your committee, to speak a few earnest words in behalf of outraged 
liberty, aiiid in vindication of that Constitution whose every provision 
has been most shamefully violated by the men in power. I claim the 
right, as an American freeman speaking to American freemen, to arraign 
this or any other Administration before the grand inquest of the Ameri- 
can people, Avhenever their acts have been of such a character as to bring 
them before that bar for trial. Did I shrink from that duty I should be 
all unworthy my citizenship, recreant to the principles taught me by a 
worthy father, and unfit for the enjoyment of those privileges won for 
me by the blood of a revolutionary ancestry. As an American freeman, 
I know no such word as loyalty, except its meaning be devotion to law. 
I know no devotion to any man or set of men. There is nothing in 
xVbraham Lincoln or his Cabinet to call forth any greater devotion in 
this hour of war than there was in James K. Polk and his ; and yet 
upon this very ground, out of the mouths of men who now arraign us 
for treason in denouncing the Administration during war, might have 
been heard, in 184Y, the most violent denunciations of James Iv. Polk 
and the war policy of the Goverinncnt. My position is based upon the 



54 JAMES W. "WALL. 

theory tliat I live under a republican form of government, of limited 
and defined powers and jurisdiction. The people of this country were 
its creators, and that government is their creature. Their duty of obe- 
dience to it is simply commensurate with the powers and jurisdiction 
with which they have invested it, and, beyond that, it has, and can have 
no manner of claim of authority over them. The sovereignty of the 
people is original and plenary ; that of the Governments they have 
originated, for their own welfare, both State and National, derivative and 
partial. The people, therefore, only owe so much submission and fealty 
as is correspondent with that measure of sovereignty they have delegated 
— no more, no less. These men in power are my and your trustees. If 
they arc faithless to the trust, shall not those who gave the power and 
reposed the trust complain ? If agents exceed the powers given in their 
commission and assume authority the principal never intended to confer, 
shall not the principal complain without being charged with antagonism 
to the ■ commission ? The Constitution is the people's commission, the 
A<lministration are simply their agents ; and shall these men violate every 
fundamental instruction in that commission, and the people (the princi- 
pal) have no right to complain without being charged with antagonism 
to the Constitution ? 

T have yet to learn that one American citizen is under any obligation 
to approach another American citizen, certainly in no sense more than 
his equal, with genuflexions or with duckings of the head. Men may 
" bend the pregnant hinges of the knee, that thrift may follow fawning ;" 
and most of the fealty, loyalty, allegiance — call it what you will — of the 
Republican party to-day is of this character. But I know nc^thing of 
this kind of loyalty, and I leave it to the shoddy contractors, the camp 
followers, and public plunderers, who are coining the blood and bones 
of their countrymen, and ride in wealth as the country's fortunes sink. 
If I choose to question the wisdom, canvass the policy, doubt the in- 
tegrity, or, if need be, resist the corruptions or usurpations of those who 
hold and prostitute power in this country, I can assure you I will do it 
though all the terrors of imprisonment, banishment, nay, even of death, 
surround me. They tried to teach me not to resist in Fort Lafeyette, 
btit I graduated without learning it. If there must be loyalty in a free 
republic, let it be simply loyalty to the Constitution and the laws. I 
know no other, and will not bow myself at the shrine of any other. 

I hold, and ever have held, that the Constitution is the Union. We 
have heard a great deal, during this wretched strife in which we are 
engaged, about preserving the national life. Tlie Constitution and the 
Union, according to the theory in which I have been taught, are one and 
inseparable. In fact, the Constitution was made " to form a more per 



CIVIL LIBEETY OVEETHROWN. 55 

feci TJnionr They live in and tlirough and by each other. ^Mien tha 
one perishes, the other dies ; the destruction of the one involves the 
subversion of the other — nay, the siihversion of the Constitution is revo- 
lution, for it changes the whole fabric and frame-work of our Govern 
ment. I care not whether the blow come from the South or North fliat 
is aimed at the Constitution, it is aimed at the nation's life. In that 
Constitution the reserved rights of the States are there secured — the 
granted powers of the Government are there defined — those great abso- 
lute rights of the citizen, securing free speech, free thought, and a free 
person, are there. There are the clauses which protect the citizen's 
person from arbitrary arrests, his property from arbitrary invasion, and 
his life from arbitrary interference. These are to be found in the amend- 
ments to the Constitution that have been most appropriately called " The 
Ten Commandments of American Freemen^ It is true they were not 
delivered as those of old w^ere, mid the lightnings and thunders of 
Sinai, but they were no less written upon the hearts of freemen by Di- 
vine inspiration. They are God-given ^rights, to be enjoyed as the air 
you breathe, or as the water you drink ; and the man who would deprive 
you of them is a tyrant, and the men who would submit to such depriva- 
tion are slaves, and deserve to be such. 

Now all these sacred, absolute rights of freemen have been ruthlessly 
trampled under foot by Abraham Lincoln and the members of his Cabi- 
net. " I can touch a bell on my right hand, my lord, and arrest a citi- 
zen of Ohio; I can touch a bell on my left and arrest a citizen of New 
York — has your Queen such power ?" said William H. Seward to Lord 
Lyons. If you, my fellow-citizens, hold these God-given rights at the 
bidding of such men, then your Constitution has but a name to live, an 
outer-seeming to beguile and deceive — it is but a delusion and a snare 
— it is the worthless husk when the golden grain is gone — the empty 
casket from which the jewel has been stolen. It was for the utterance 
of such sentiments as these that I was torn from the midst of my shriek- 
ing family by the myrmidons of the Administration, and consigned to 
the damp casemates of one of its vile bastiles, and I am here to reiterate 
them, and will do it while I have a brain to conceive or a tongue to 
utter. No man can tell, my friends, how the iron of persecution has 
entered my soul ; how the ban dogs of hate and lying malice have been 
let loose upon my tracks. I have had fo endure the lying tongue of 
slander, the half-averted countenance of men once my friends, the perse- 
cution of members of my own party — that party in the defence of whose 
principles I have given the best years of my life ; but I can bear it all, 
welcome it all, nay, glory in it all, if I can once more sec the triumph 
of the honest Democracv of the land over the foes of Constitutional 



56 jAMi:s vr. wall. 

Liberty, Yes, I can bear it all — "hate's yell, envy's biss, and folly'p 
bray" — keeping my firm gaze upon the future — trusting that that future 
shall yet vindicate me in that hour -when these oppressors of mankind 
shall call upon the rocks and mountains to cover them from the over- 
whelming wrath of an indignant people whom they have so basely 
betrayed. 

The men in power to-day who have committed these gross outrages 
upon the trinity of freedom — freedom of person, of speech, and of the 
press — pretend to justify them on the ground of necessity, by virtue of 
what they are pleased to style tlie war power. Shakspeare, who scru- 
tinized with sucli keen gaze, the past, tlie present, and the future, fore- 
knew the ways of 1863. A plain question being asked by certain citi- 
zens of Venice, concerning outrages upon their rights, the Commander- 
in-Chief 

" Evades them with a bombast circumstance, 
Horribly stuffed with epithets of war." 

This was the war power as it answered in Venice, centuries am-o. It is 
the war power that answers in 1863, Avhen certain gross outrages are 
complained of, which, being interpreted, means simply the will of Abra- 
ham Lincoln, the Commander-in-Chief, or Ambrose Burnside, Major- 
General. For a long time "this war power of Lincoln was a puzzle to 
me ; but a little scrutiny revealed to me that it was only William II. 
Seward's " Higher Law," dressed in soldier's clothes. You all remem- 
ber the Higher Law before it got its soldier's clothes on, and spoke such 
swelling words out of the mouth of Seward, as " being above the Con- 
stitution," and out of the mouth of another Abolitionist, denouncing the 
Constitution as "a league with hell and a covenant with death." But, - 
my friends, William H. Seward cannot claim to be the progenitor of 
this Higher Law. It is considerably older than Mr. Lincoln's Secretary 
of State. It is as old, in fact, as absolute government. It has been the 
companion and the power behind the throne, greater than the throne 
itself, of every tyrant since the world began. It was with the old As- 
syrian and Ninevite monarchies. It sat by the side on the oriental 
thrones of Tamerlane and Ghengis Khan. It was with Sylla in his 
bloody proserij)tions ; it was with Nero when he made a bonfire of 
Jiome and wrapped Christiahs in the skins of wild beasts, that tliey 
might give light at night. It was with Tiberius Cicsar when he declated 
from his rock at Capre that high treason consisted of thinking evil of 
the imperial family, and sent thousands to prison and to death. It was 
with John when its mad teachings stirred up the rebellious barons to 
extort from the frightened king that memorable declaration — '' No man 



CIVIL LIBERTY OVERTHROWN. 57 

shall be seized or disseized, neither will we go upon him or come upon 
him, save hy the judgment of his peers or the laws of the land." 

It was with Charles I. when he marched down to the House to arrest 
the refractory members of Parliament, and it only deserted him, with a 
iiendish laugh, when he mounted the scaffold, and saw him safe in the 
executionei"'s hands. The Higher Law was with James H. when lie in- 
vaded Ireland, repealed the act of settlement, and attempted to suspend 
the high privilege of the writ of habeas corpus. It was with the I'uritan 
rulers of New England when they whipped, hung, and branded Quakers 
and Baptists in Massachusetts. It was with George III. when he signed 
the stamp act and the act imposing a tax upon tea. It accompanied 
John Brown into Virginia, and taught him that Sharp's rifles and Massa- 
chusetts pikes were better means to emancipate slaves than the old Con- 
stitutional methods. It passed the personal liberty bills iu the New 
England States, and framed the platform at Chicago. It produced the 
irrepressible conflict between freedom and slavery, and it is now " the 
power at Washington behind the throne, greater than the throne itself," 
suggesting and advising Lincoln in all the course of his opposition to the 
Constitution. But now this ancient and venerable functionary appears 
for the first time during this century in soldier's clothes, and is called 
the War Power. He sports the single star, wears the cocked hat, and 
holds the commission of a Major-Gcneral, and there is a more imperious 
tone to his voice, and a greater emphasis in his commands. He stood 
by Burnside when he tore Vallandigham from his weeping wife and 
child by a band of aj-med ruffians. He whispered to Lincoln, "Banish 
him," and he banished him. He induced Lincoln to issue his Emancipa- 
tion Proclamation, to sign the Confiscation and Conscription Acts, and 
issue his Proclamation suspending the privilege of the writ of habeas 
corpus ; and to countenance all those measures which have added ten- 
fold strength to the Confederate arms. 

My friends, did you ever read the German drama of Faust ? Faust is 
a learned German doctor, who, through the agency of magic, raises the 
devil and sells his soul to him. The devil comes at his call and becomes 
his servant. He gives him power and dominion over others. Faust has 
power, but no peace, and every day he feels the tyranny of hell more 
keenly. In vain he seems to himself to assert the most absolute power 
over the devil, by imposing the most apparently ii^iipossible tasks. One 
thing is as easy as another to the devil. " What next, Faust ?" is re- 
peated every day with more imperious servility. Faust groans in spirit, 
his power is a curse. He commands women and wine, but he cannot 
command peace. Finally, he begins to look for a charm in his magical 
books, by whicli he may be enabled to cheat the devil about the bargain 



58 ja:mes w. wall. 

he has made ; bnt in vain. Sometimes the devil turns over the page for 
him, and pointing with liis finger says, " Tr>/ (hat, Faust." Finally, 
tune's up with Faust, and the devil vanishes with him at midnight, in 
such a storm of lightning and thunder as ncv.cr shook the towers of 
"Wurtemberg before. I have often thought that this drama of Faust was 
being played over again in Washington, but this time with real charac- 
ters, with Lincoln in the character of Faust, and his " War Power" as 
the devil, the juggling fiend to whom he has sold hLs soul. That war 
power has lured many potentates to destruction before Lincoln, and 
there is no reason why Abraham First should prove an exception. 
Charles First, without a written Constitution, never committed half as 
many crimes against popular liberty as this Lincoln, under a written 
Constitution of defined powers, and yet the Stuart lost his head. 

A few more words upon the character of these outrages, to show how 
monstrous and perfectly indefensible they are, and I will pass to the dis- 
cussion of other matters. I have said that these gTeat rights guaranteed 
in the amendments to your Constitirtion were absolute riglits. Admit 
the right of Lincoln and his Cabinet to deprive the citizen of his liberty, 
not in the military service, for an alleged civil otience, "without due 'pro- 
cess of lau'" by a telegram, as has been done, and you must admit the 
right to take your property, nay, your life, in the same high-handed 
manner; for the same clause that protects your liberty, protects your 
life and property. Nay, further, admit the right to violate one of these 
clauses in the great Bill of Rights in our Constitution, and yob admit 
the right to violate all. There is one clause which distinctly says, " no 
cruel or unusual punishment shall be inflicted." Lincoln has assumed 
the right to introduce the punishment of banishment in \'allandigliam's 
case — he has the same right to bring back the peine forte et dure, the 
thumbscrews, or any other of the cruel punishments that in the old 
world so disgraced the annals of the criminal law. If not, why not? 
If these rights be thus yielded to the unprincipled Administration, I 
shall be very happy to learn from its supporters wherein Lincoln's gov- 
ernment will difter from the despotism of Russia, Turkey, or Persia, or 
fi'om that of his sable cousin, the King of Dahomey, who claims not 
only the right to torture and kill his subjects, but to eat them, and it 
works attainder of blood, if tlieir flesh does not set well upon his royal " 
stomach. Men who, under a wi'itten Constitution, with powers expressly 
defined, contend for the existence of any such absolute authority in an 
Administration that is the mere creature of the popular will, are either 
?:nave3, fools, or cowards. They are welcome to either horn of the 
dilemma. Most certain it is, they are unworthy the privileges vouch- 
safed to them by a patriotic ancestry, who declared that " resistance to 



CIVIL LIBERTY OVEETHROWJS". 59 

tyrants was obedience to God." Ceiiain it is, that the Adruinistration, 
in assuming such powers, have ti'ansccndod the authority vested in them 
by the Constitution, and to that extent should be resisted to the Umits 
of our constitutional powers. 

All these abnormal acts of which I have made complaint have grown 
out of the existence of a civil war, such as no other country has wit- 
nessed before, a civil war which has already slaughtered hecatombs of 
victims, destroyed the material wealth of the country, demoralized its 
people, and is piling up a frightful national debt, which will weigli like 
a fell incubus upon your loins and that of your children's children to the 
remotest generation. It was first pretended that this war was to be 
waged for the preservation of the Constitution and to restore the integ- 
rity of the Union ; vain words ! or as Carlyle would say, " meaningless, 
full of abysmal nonsense, and chaotic balderdash," because the Consti- 
tution had never conferred the power to make war upon States, under 
the pretence of crushing out rebellion, and the men who framed that 
Constitution had said, "a war upon States by the Federal Government, 
under the pretence of putting down rebellion, would be civil war, and 
civil war must destroy, not preserve your government," apd "the sword 
may divide, but can never reunite the Union." Tlie war, then, in its 
inception was an usurpation of power not granted in the Constitution. 
This war for the Union and the Constitution soon developed itself into 
what it is now, a war for negro emancipation and Southern subjugation; 
and as a fitting means to such an end, this abolitionized Administration 
commenced and still continues its attacks upon the freedom of the white 
race of the North, that they may crush out of them that spirit of resist- 
ance which as freemen they will manifest, but as slaves never. How 
far the present alarming condition of our affairs may justify what I say 
you can well judge, as you stand amid the shattered wrecks of your 
past liberties. Step by step, one civil right after another has been taken 
away, and now, since the issuing of the Presidential Proclamation, sus- 
pending everywhere the privilege of the writ of habeas corjms, the paral- 
lels of despotism are close upon that last intrenchment of liberty, the 
ballot-box. For the defence of this, you and I must struggle to the 
death ; for if surrendered, the cause of civil liberty falls powerless be- 
neath the iron heel of the most remorseless military despotism the world 
has ever known. And yet men professing to be Democrats in the 
midst of the wreck of their civil liberties, with every right taken away ; 
with the civil courts closed to their appeals ; with their personal liberty 
at the mercy of every military satrap; with not even tlieir homes or 
family altars safe from the armed tread of a military despotism " that 
neither slumbers nor sleeps," are still in favor of the war. When their 



60 JAMES W. WALL. 

weeping wives and screaming children may have to witness, as mine 
have done, the husband and the father torn from their clinging embrace, 
and liave no redress, no court to which they can appeal, no tribunal be- 
fure which they can be heard ; in the midst of it all, their cowardly 
tongues are talking complacently, blandly, and sweetly " of a vigorous 
prosecution of a war for the Constitution and the Union." With the 
Union rended as by the convulsions of an earthquake ; with a red sea 
of blood rolling in a surging torrent between ; with the Constitution in 
fragments at their feet; with all the civic rights that men hold dear 
trampled beneath the heel of a military despotism; these serene, un- 
ruffled politicians, who love policy better than principle, and who would 
rather forego the loss of every civil right, than the loss of their chances 
of office — many of whom are now basking in the smiles of official patron- 
age, utter in gentle accents their cry for a still further prosecution of 
this war, which has already swallowed up all that was valuable of civil 
liberty, and all that was heretofore sacred as a constitutional obligation. 

The crews ingulfed and fast going down in the treacherous embrace 
of the Norwegian maelstrom, might as well insist that the horrid grasp 
of those wild waters was necessary for the future safe navigation of their 
already doomed vessel. The whirl of the waters of civil war will nevei 
float in safety the good ship of the Constitution and the Union. There 
never yet was a civil war waged that did not encroach upon the liber- 
ties of the people ; that did not multiply taxes and tax-gatherers, and 
did not get the armies of the kingdom more arid more under the con- 
trol of the central power. There is, there can be, no reason why this 
nation should prove any exception to the rule. 

By a political and cunning Administration, through the agencies of a 
remorseless civil war, the people of the North have been cheated almost 
entirely out of their liberties ; and when every barrier is broken down, 
this Administration may expect, tlirough a large standing ?irmy, to keep 
and hold every position they have won. It signifies nothing to say that 
our armies are composed of such men as cannot be supposed to be ever 
willing to join in any measures for enslaving their country. " Use doth 
breed a habit in a man." Those soldiers that Burnside sent to drag 
Vallandigham from his half frantic wife and child, if three years ago 
they had been told that they would ever have been guilty of such an 
atrocity as this, must have repelled the suspicion as the grossest insult 
you could offer them — now they glory in it. We know the passions 
and inteiests of men, and we have witnessed how easy it is to sway them 
dui-ing the last two years of a remorseless civil strife. Beddes, we know 
how dangerous it is to trust the very best of men with too much power. 
Where was there a braver army than that under Julius Cresar, or that 



CIVIL LIBERTY OVEETHEOWjS". 61 

served their country more faithfully ? That army was commanded 
generally by the best citizens of Rome, by men of great fortune and 
patriotism, and yet they did not in the end hesitate to consent to the 
subjugation of their country. It is an axiom in the world's history that 
military and civil power cannot long subsist side by side, without the 
civil power being forced to succumb. 

I have seen enough to satisfy me, my friends, that the Abolition 
fanatioism of our country has got the control of the Administration, and 
that this war, once pretended to be waged for the Constitution and the 
Union, is now waged for the emancipation of the black race, and for the 
entire subjugation of the white race of the South. That it will, that it 
can accomplish neither, I am well satisfied, and for such a purpose you 
may wage a war for twenty years, that shall be fruitless of any results, 
except in the entire overthrow of civil liberty, and the prostration and 
ruin of both sections, leaving them an easy prey to the ambitious de- 
signs of foreign powers. If you are willing to wage such a war, then 
do ail in your power to keep the present Administration where they 
are; if not, oppose it at the ballot-box, and under a change of Adminis- 
trations may come a change of policy which may yet restore peace to a 
torn and distracted country, build up the waste places, and when in the 
words of Nicholas Biddle, " These banditti may be scourged back to 
their caverns, and the penitentiaries reclaim their fugitives in office." 

It is astonishing, my friends, what parallels may be found in history 
for our present condition. History has been declared " Philosophy 
teaching by example ;" and it is so to any man who will stud}' its wise 
precepts. Several confederate Italian provinces to whose courage and 
industry the Roman Republic in a great measure owed its meridian 
splendor, despairing of obtaining by fair means the privileges to which 
they had every reasonable claim, took up arms. They founded a new 
capital, they constituted to themselves a senate, and they chose Con- 
suls. The mass of the people of Rome called aloud for vengeance on 
their ministers and politicians, to whom they ascribed the war. A 
resolute Tribune had the courage to impeach the ostensible contrivers 
and managers of so unnatural a war. The Roman Senate, though aided 
by its old enemies, the Gauls, and by many whose patriotism, as in our 
time, was not quite proof against State artifices and venality, was at last 
compelled to cede with a very bad grace, those terms which ought at 
first to have been accorded in amicable compact, Durino; that social 
war was spilt the best blood of Rome. In less than three. years three 
hundred thousand perished on the field of combat. But there was a 
still more fatal consequence, for it was in that school that Marius, Sylla, 
and other aspirinaj leaders learned their first rudiments of despotism, 



62 JAMES T7. WALL. 

and familiarized themselves to the massacre of their fellow-subjects. 
The sword unsheathed by order of the Roman Senate and under the 
ahihority of the Roman people, to deprive of their dearest rights their 
associates and brethren, was not returned to the scabbard until Rome 
lierself had felt the sharpness of its edge in her inmost vitals. Familiar- 
ized to domestic slaughter and military sway, they could not prevail 
upon themselves to stop until they had subverted the Constitution and 
totally annihilated the liberties of the whole Commonwealth. 

In short, by this war and its results, the Romans were irrevocably 
undone. Hence the perpetual dictatorship ;• hence the succeeding tri- 
umvirs, and, at length the throne and tyranny of Ca3sar. History 
points to these stories of the downfall of nations and the overthrow of 
their liberties as beacon lights to warn us from those rocks on which so 
many stately argosies were dashed to pieces. Regardless of the 
gleams of the warning light, we are madly driving the ship of State 
upon the same treacherous rocks, and nothing but Divine interposi- 
tion can save us from the same fate. Mad with the passions of the 
hour, animated by a blind fanaticism that is reckless of consequences, 
we witnessed history repeating itself in the same sad story of the past. 
AVe heeded not, but pushed madly on, supposing, in our insane pride, 
that this nation could escape the terrible consequences that have ever 
followed from the desolating influences of civil war. National vanity 
and superciliousness uttered great swelling words, and indulged in 
boasting whose v.emptiness and vanity have made us the laughing-stock 
of Europe. After more than two years of a struggle with a foe vastly 
inferior to us both in numbers and resources, with varying successes, 
the North fin<ls itself to-day no nearer the accomplishment of its object 
than when the war begun. Like the earth-born giant of old, the South 
seems to gather fresh strength from every fall, and to-day is pressing 
the North with a stubbornness such as she has never exhibited before 
in the struggle. It is in vain the Republican journals and the Adminis- 
tration repeat the well-worn storj-^f the collapse of the rebellion, the 
breaking of its backbone, and other kindred absurdities, with which, for 
the last two years, they have been endeavoring to deceive this people. 
It is evident that the people do not believe them, for they can discern 
from the signs around them that the task is no nearer accomplishment, 
if it is not rendered more difficult than ever. 

In the mean time, the effects of the continuation of this wretched 
civil war are being felt everywhere at the North. Men are learning 
despotism in the same school where Marius and Sylla were taught. As 
one looks round upon the condition of our affairs here at the North, 
we am exclaiia with Silius, in Ben Jonson's play of "Sojanus:" 



r 



CIVIL LIBERTY OVEKTHROWN". 63 

" Well, all is worthy of us, were it more, 
"Who, with our riots, pride, and civil hate, 
Have so provoked the justice of the gods : 
We, that within these four-score j'ears, were born 
Free, equal lords of the triumphed world. 
And knew no masters, but afloctions ; 
To wliich betrajdng first our liberties, 
We since became the slaves to one man's lusts, 
And now to many : every miuist'ring spy 
That wiU accuse and swear, is lord of you, « 

Of me, of all our fortunes and our lives." 

Our own follies, our own base corruptions, prostituting tlic electivG 
franchise and putting up our best offices for sale, sacrificing jirinciple 
for policy, and our sense of right* for a base, truckling expediency, have 
brought this punishment upon us. The times were out of joint ; the 
men were not the same as heretofore. We were base, pooi', and 
degenerate, from the exalted strain of our great fathers. Those mighty 
spirits lie raked up with their ashes in their urns, and not a spark of 
their eternal fire glows in our bosoms. Had we followed their brilliant 
example, and listened to their precepts, the curse of this civil war 
would not be upon us to-day. Let it be our duty, in the future, to do 
what in us lies to hold up the memory of these great names, that the 
people, plague-stricken as they are, may look up and live. We must 
come back to the early principles of this Government, or we perish as a 
nation. We must overthrow the party in power, who have shown by 
their acts the wickedness of their designs, and who are fast breaking 
down not only the defences that guard our liberties, but those that 
make out the rights of the States. Consolidation and centralization 
are the objects and the aims of these usurpers. It is through cen- 
tralized power, permanently established, that they expect to rear a 
despotism upon the ruins of what was once a free republic. 



\ 



,ei2e27^35 7^ii^ FOR THE TIMES, 

I' U BUSHED BY 

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♦•♦-- 

L Jttat Puhlished a K-^w Work, tnlitied 

SPEECHES, ARGUMENTS, ADDRESSES, AND LETTERS OF 
CLEMENT L. VALLANDIGHAM. 

This book oi>ous willi a Biograpliical Sketch, more full and .ocomaio than any 
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